NOAA Guide to Assessing Green Infrastructure Costs and Benefits for Flood Reduction

NOAA provides communities with a six-step process to assess the costs and benefits of green infrastructure (GI) to reduce flooding in this report. Communities can use this guide to inform flood risk planning, and to assess the cost effectiveness of implementing green infrastructure projects. The primary steps and related actions provided in the guide are designed to lead a community to the implementation of a green infrastructure strategy for a given watershed.

The guide is based on experiences from three pilot studies in the Great Lakes region (Duluth, Minnesota; Toledo, Ohio; and Green Bay, Wisconsin) as well as a community workshop on the He‘eia watershed in Hawaii to test transferability. Specific examples from these four case studies are also provided for each step to illustrate implementation of specific tasks and offer lessons learned.