A Decision Framework for Integrated Green Grey Infrastructure (IGGIframe)

Increasing the amount of green space in our cities and towns is increasingly recognised as good for people and the environment, making it a healthier and nicer place for people and wildlife to live. Greening of our cities and towns can also help us adapt to the stresses of climate change and can often benefit the UK economy such as by saving councils and water companies money - thus providing more resources for other services we all depend on. Most of the emphasis on green infrastructure has focussed on buildings and the green spaces between them like parks and urban trees. For example, green roofs and rain gardens are increasingly common features in our urban landscape, which can save money and improve the environment at the same time. These multifunctional benefits are so significant that there is a big push by governments in the UK and worldwide to encourage the use of green infrastructure approaches over traditional grey methods in urban areas, where possible.

However, some parts of our cities and towns must remain grey such as roads, railways, bridges, perimeter fencing, garden walls, sea defences and sewage outfall pipes. But what if we could also green parts of these linear infrastructure systems, to provide more habitat for key species and to improve the quality of the environment for us and other species? This involves enhancing the 'multifunctionality' or 'ecosystem services' provided by hard infrastructure - which means enabling our grey infrastructure to perform more than one role for society. What if our foot bridges can also act as corridors for door mice? Or our seawalls can provide habitat for animals that commercial fish like sea bass eat? Solutions like these enable multifunctionality and can help stretch the government's purse further and make our cities and towns greener at the same time.

This project packages UK case studies that showcase best practice examples of greening our grey assets into a toolkit. The toolkit can be used by organisations such as Natural England, the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and Natural Resources Wales to understand and present the costs and benefits of applying green infrastructure principles to hard infrastructure like bridges and estuary walls. Using the toolkit will enable them to win high-level support for applying these novel ideas. The toolkit we will create will also help small businesses such as landscape architecture firms generate new projects by providing a framework and case studies to demonstrate why and how to do this. Larger consultancy and engineering firms (e.g. Arup and Mott MacDonald) will also benefit from this tool, as they can better pitch opportunities, with firm costs, design criteria and a track record of success to prospective clients including housing and marina developers. It will also save them (and their clients) money as they can refer to the framework and case studies from this project, rather than having to search for this information on a project-by-project basis.

The aim of this innovation project is to have direct, measureable benefits for end-users during and beyond the life of the project. One key end-user partner (Environment Agency (EA)) has been involved since the project's inception. Since initial conversations, we have worked closely together to co-design and co-produce this proposal via meetings, teleconferences and email exchanges, along with other key partners: Natural England, Arc Consulting, and Historic Environment Scotland as well as CIRIA. All have been actively involved in the design of the project and planned outputs ensuring delivery of key benefits and outcomes for all. The project has been designed to optimise the strong relationships between the Principle Investigator and key partners, and long-standing relationships between each other. During the project, the co-production of the critical success factors decision-support framework will ensure that key requirements of these partners (via an advisory board and input from key supporters including Southampton and Glasgow Councils, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and Spectrum Housing) are embedded into the design of the critical success factors framework and selection of case studies. This will enable the project outputs to directly benefit the strategic and operational practice of many organisations. This scales from national regulatory and conservation authorities through to a micro-SME, as evidenced in the case for support and accompanying letters.

The outputs will be sustainable and will generate economic and environmental improvement impacts. The development of the framework and a second project on river bioengineering supported by the same core partners (i.e. EA and CIRIA), will improve the outcomes and sustainability of this project. Working together with core partners, the advisory board and the HR Wallingford project, the IGGI framework will be demonstrated across urban, terrestrial, riverine and coastal landscapes. The framework and test case studies will be designed to meet critical user requirements (i.e. evidenced business case) for adopting IGGI approaches. Partner and supporting organisations have clearly articulated how they will make use of the outputs from this project, and in some cases, confirmed their willingness to assist in measuring the uptake and impacts arising this project.

This framework and case study design will improve efficiencies, as the coastal examples from this project will be more useable for future applications (e.g. planned Bioengineering Manual by the Working with Natural Processes Research Framework which forms part of the Joint EA/Defra Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management R&D Programme). Currently, the benefits associated with the inclusion of IGGI in flood and coastal protection infrastructure are rarely brought into the project business-case, viewed as costly post project add-ons. Implementation is ad-hoc and practice and experience rarely shared. Marshalling information on performance, benefits and costs will lead to significant efficiency savings for the EA and partner organisations as experience is shared, freeing up more resources for other priorities. For designers, consultants and engineers, the outputs from this project will lead to increased consideration and uptake of green grey approaches as part of future retrofitting, maintenance and development projects. This framework will provide an improved business case for IGGI helping organisations to apply these techniques to client projects saving money, as less research for these approaches would be required.
The proposed work will also enhance the impact of NERC funded and NERC-related science by developing the first set of case studies for improving ecosystem service provision on hard, linear, non-building infrastructure assets. This output would be globally unique and would help place NERC science and UK PLC at the forefront of green infrastructure research, policy and practice.