Mar 20, 2017

SFEI’s GreenPlan-IT is a planning level toolkit which help municipalities with green infrastructure planning, assessment and reporting. Green infrastructure is a multi benefit tool that helps to restore the natural water cycle of infiltration and filtration (most notably of mercury and PCBs) within the urban environment.

Recently, SFEI has updated the GreenPlan-IT Site Locator Tool, a module within the toolkit, to version 2.1, furthering its functionality and usefulness of outputs. With this version of the tool, users can select a specific location to learn more about the specific opportunities and constraints that resulted in its final ranking. Furthermore, four new types of green infrastructure have been added to the tool: bioretention with and without and underdrains, tree boxes/wells, and flow through planter boxes. In version 2.1 each type of green infrastructure can have a type specific ranking applied to it as some opportunities and constraints affect only some types of installations, but not others. Aside from these larger updates, there have also been improvements to documentation and tool description, standardization and refinement in output symbolization, terminology used, the automatic creation of output maps in multiple formats, and general improvement in the efficiency of the analysis process and code. With these changes, users will have greater flexibility in running the tool for different types of green infrastructure and also be able to communicate their outputs more effectively for planning level documents.

Background: The GreenPlan-IT toolkit works at a watershed scale to identify potential locations, evaluate their effectiveness, and track their performance and contribution to achieving programmatic goals for reductions in pollutant and storm water runoff. GreenPlan-IT meetings municipality needs of Municipal Regional Permit compliance by providing a scientifically sound planning tool to support green infrastructure master plans, in order to guide future green infrastructure implementation. The GreenPlan-IT toolkit consists of four tools: The Site Locator Tool, The Hydrologic Model, The Optimization Tool, and the Green Infrastructure Tracker. The Site Locator Tool identifies potential locations for different types of green infrastructure and applies a custom ranking based on local data and priorities. The Hydrologic Model identifies critical areas for runoff and pollutant source areas and provides the ability to compare runoff and water quality conditions before and after green infrastructure implementation. The Optimization Tool runs hundred of green infrastructure buildout scenarios and identifies the installation configuration that provides the greatest reduction in stormwater runoff and pollution load for the lowest cost. Lastly, the Green Infrastructure Tracker is a web tool that can track specific green infrastructure installations in terms of maintenance needs and performance, as well as allowing the user to aggregate the effect of multiple installations, for a user defined area, to produce reports for easy communication and reporting needs.

We invite you to visit http://greenplanit.sfei.org/ for access to this free to use tool and to learn more about it’s capabilities.

Programs and Focus Areas: 
Clean Water Program
Watershed Monitoring and Modeling
Environmental Informatics Program
Software Engineering