Applying Nature-Based Solutions and SITES for Water Resilience

Registration Information:

To register for this course - please reserve your seat for the "Resilient Places Summit" located in the Greenbuild agenda.

Registering for the session holds your seat in the class until 5 minutes prior to the scheduled start time. At that time your seat in the session can no longer be guaranteed.

If a workshop or session is full, you will not be able to add it to your agenda; however, if you have the appropriate pass you will be able to enter the session on a first-come first-served basis 5 minutes prior to the scheduled start of the event so long as capacity has not been reached

Greenbuild staff at the entrance of the session have the ability to stop permitting entrance to the session when the room hits the set capacity.

Description:

As we prepare for climate change, increasing population, and rapid urbanization, there is a potent opportunity to invest differently in development projects. Parks, university campuses, streetscapes, plazas, and other open spaces can serve as essential infrastructure to improving health and safety, creating habitat, providing flood control, reducing urban heat island effects, and more. Nature-based solutions and landscape-led interventions create value and address multiple societal needs too. Disadvantaged communities are often disproportionately affected by changing climate conditions, including flooding, drought, wildfires, and severe storms., and nature-based solutions can also provide ongoing comprehensive co-benefits to communities by stimulating investments and improving community cohesion. Resilient designs at both the site, neighborhood, and community scales can reduce the impacts of these hazards and improve the capacity to both withstand and recover from these events. This session will focus on water resilience in two distinct contexts with varying issues from stormwater runoff, CSOs, and flooding from hurricanes to dealing with the lack of water during drought. The hospitality project on the Alabama coast will include insights and lessons learned in how it utilized the SITES rating system in combination with LEED to achieve multiple sustainability and resilience goals while preparing the site for hurricanes and storm surges. The second case study - also SITES certified - is located in a highly urbanized area in Philadelphia addressing multiple issues from poor soil conditions to combined sewer overflows while meeting project goals as a park within a university campus. Perspectives from diverse disciplines will be shared including a civil engineer, landscape architect, and sustainability consultant. The session will conclude with a unique perspective from the U.S. EPA Office of Water describing how it is addressing the use of Nature-based solutions to promote resilience and environmental justice.