Peer Reviewed Research Publications

RP2014: Journal Article: Mainstreaming green infrastructure elements into the design of public road reserves: challenges for road authorities

Global warming poses particular challenges for urban areas due to the greater intensity of rainfall and issues of stormwater runoff, and the heat island effect generated by the reflection of the sun off hard surfaces, such as buildings and road pavements; for example, in Australian cities (i.e., Sydney), roads account for approximately 25% of all urban land use. The challenge for road authorities is to implement green infrastructure in road planning, design and implementation as the term “green infrastructure” has appeared increasingly throughout the world in land management and planning. Despite these environmental challenges, traditional highway engineering practices use arguments regarding the economic inefficiencies of urban traffic congestion to justify the business case for road-widening schemes and new road construction projects with associated de-forestation and vegetation loss.

An international literature review and site visits of green infrastructure best practice in Australia, Singapore, the U.K. and the USA is reported. A typical road authority project is described in Sydney, Australia, where the initial design concept to accommodate growth in all modes of transport was road widening and land acquisition, but the authors persuaded the local and state government authorities to consider other options to “green” the infrastructure, particularly opportunities to add trees and vegetation near the roadway, which provide the additional bonus of managing surface water runoff. From this general problem, the case for, and value to, road authorities to develop green infrastructure guidelines for project planning and implementation, are presented. The conclusions include ongoing research to formulate draft guidelines for governments based on a holistic approach to the planning and design of high-density urban development around transport nodes that includes green infrastructure principles.

Read the full article HERE

DOI: 10.5963/IJEP0601001

RP2014: Conference paper: Thermal impact of blue infrastructure: Casestudy Cheonggyecheon, Seoul (Korea)

Higher densities tend to experience a relatively hotter surface temperature, compared to their peri-urban surroundings. This artificial heat stress in cities is denoted the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Urban geometry, landscape, land surfaces and anthropogenic waste heat are cited as the UHIs’ key contributors. However, magnitude and distribution of the UHI effect varies in different cities due to different regional climates, urban land use patterns and scales of investigation. Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea, is influenced like many other large cities by the urban heat phenomena.

The urban heat phenomena are typical for a metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. Special geographical and political conditions are combined with a high population density, remarkable high-rise buildings and small open spaces are characteristic for Seoul. The city of Seoul (9.8 Million inhabitants) is located in a valley surrounded by mountains in the north and south. Furthermore, in 1972 a restricted development zone (RDZ) precinct was established by the government. This is essentially a Greenbelt that has a size of 1,567 km². This greenbelt is more than two times larger than the city of Seoul. Seoul has an area of 605 km². All urban development within the RDZ has been prohibited during the last four decades.

The calculated land surface temperature (LST) in this paper was obtained by using the satellite Landsat-7. It was carried out a calibration of the data on the probe specificity, the emission and the transmittance. The resolution of the images is 30 meters. Satellite maps are available for free at the NASA based remote sensing platform (Earthexplorer 2015).

We investigated the micro-climate changes and urban-scale cooling load reduction which has resulted from the so called Cheonggyecheon water stream. This stream is located in central Seoul and runs from the northern central business district into the Han-River.

After the Korean war (1950-1953) the Cheonggyecheon river was for more than 50 years covered with pavement and concrete overpass structures. The reconstruction of the expressway was carried out from 2002 to 2005. To estimate the thermal impact of the expressway into a water pathway remote sensing analysis (Landsat 7 ETM+) was undertaken. 20 Landsat-7 ETM+ images from 2000 till 2012 were used to compare the land surface temperature (LST) distribution during the time the expressway was there and through to the reconstruction and the establishment of the river stream. A built-up area of two km width surrounds the new water pathway and this was used as a reference area.

The investigation could show that the establishment of the Cheonggyecheon stream forced a considerable thermal impact, i. e. an average decrease in the land surface temperature by seven degrees Celsius.

Read the paper HERE.

RP2014: Conference paper: Review of tools for quantifying the contribution of green infrastructure to carbon performance

The exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and biosphere is an important factor in global climate regulation. Consequently, it is important to examine how carbon flows and cycles between different pools and how carbon stocks change in response to afforestation, reforestation, deforestation, and other land-cover and land-use activities.

Eco-cities and green-cities are emerging concepts for the retrofitting of our urban areas and important component in the creation of more sustainable development towards climate change adaptation and mitigation. Green infrastructure as a key part of eco-cities and green-cities contributes as a major carbon pool for. The term 'green infrastructure' refers to an interconnected network of landscape assets that are intertwined with engineered (grey) infrastructure and buildings.

The ability to assess the performance of green infrastructure, based on measurable criteria at a variety of temporal and spatial scales, is critical for defining the difference between effective and non-effective scenarios for sustainable urban development. This paper aims to identify the most relevant and applicable evaluation tools, applications and methods for quantifying the carbon performance of green infrastructure in Australia. The existing quantitative tools used to measure green infrastructure sustainability performance are varied in terms of the scale, components and input.

This study has identified and tabulated the most relevant tools for quantifying the features and carbon services of green infrastructure. The aim is to help policymakers, environmental groups and researchers to choose the most appropriate tool(s) for the intended context and it will lead them to a more useful and accurate carbon foot printing assessment outcome.

Read the paper HERE.

RP2014: Conference paper: A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Green Infrastructure Sustainability Performance in Australia

In recent years, as environmental issues increasingly permeate the urban discourse, the more holistic term “sustainability” has become a watchword internationally. Numerous appraisal frameworks, sustainability indicators and rating tools of varying effectiveness have been developed to gauge the effectiveness of sustainability interventions.

Urban ecology is arguably one of the main approaches for formulating and assessing sustainable urban development, policy and management. Although there are several methods to evaluate urban ecosystems, an integrated assessment system which addresses the range of ecosystem services necessary to maximise sustainability outcomes remains elusive. “Green” infrastructure, as distinct from conventional “grey” infrastructure, is an emerging concept linked to natural and designed ecosystems and the services they provide. While it is difficult to have one universal definition for green infrastructure, it is generally recognised as embracing all the natural, semi-natural and engineered networks of multifunctional ecological systems within, around and between urban areas at all temporal and spatial scales.

This paper proposes a methodology and a conceptual framework for evaluating green infrastructure performance, derived initially from the literature and adapted for the Australian context by incorporating the results from a semi-structured interview process involving twenty one selected Australian practitioners and researchers. This proposed framework combines three key themes: ecosystem services, human health and wellbeing and ecosystem health. It helps to provide a basis for determining specific indicators to describe the measured phenomena pertinent to green infrastructure performance and serves as a foundation for a proposed indicator-based assessment model in future studies.

Read the paper HERE.

RP2014: Conference Paper: Developing a sustainability indicator set for measuring green infrastructure performance

2015, At Italy; Conference paper presented at Urban Planning and Architecture Design for Sustainable Development, UPADSD. Pakzad, P. and Osmond, P., Developing a sustainability indicator set for measuring green infrastructure performance.

An urban ecosystem is a dynamic system. Therefore, regular monitoring through the use of measurable indicators will enable an assessment of performance and effectiveness. This paper presents a conceptual framework to facilitate the development of an inclusive model for the sustainability assessment of green infrastructure. The framework focuses on key interactions between human health, ecosystem services and ecosystem health. This study reviews existing models for assessing green infrastructure performance and evaluates these models via a range of selection criteria proposed by the authors based on literature review and interviews with stakeholders. This enables derivation of a novel conceptual framework that identifies and brings together the criteria and key indicators. This integrated framework may then be applied to develop a composite indicator-based assessment model to measure and monitor performance of green infrastructure projects and support future studies.

View the article online.