Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/N017404/1
A Decision Framework for Integrated Green Grey Infrastructure (IGGIframe)
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor L Naylor, University of Glasgow, College of Science and Engineering
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr M Coombes, University of Oxford, Geography - SoGE
- Grant held at:
- University of Glasgow, College of Science and Engineering
- Science Area:
- Freshwater
- Marine
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Ecosystem services
- Conservation Ecology
- Coastal & Waterway Engineering
- Water & Coastal Structures
- Landscape Architecture
- Green infrastructure
- Environmental Geography
- Earth Surface Processes
- Abstract:
- 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.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/N017404/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Innovation
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Innovation - GI
This grant award has a total value of £98,747
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DI - Staff | DA - Estate Costs | DI - T&S | DA - Other Directly Allocated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £16,483 | £32,006 | £7,241 | £25,171 | £11,410 | £4,043 | £2,394 |
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