Sensor Testing for Green Infrastructure Performance

Green infrastructure roadway swale

The term green infrastructure is used to describe a variety of landscape features or ecology related best management practices (BMPs) implemented to reduce the adverse effects of stormwater by diverting the water to rain gardens or similar systems for slow absorption by soils and plants or storage for later use.

But as green infrastructure is more widely adopted, detailed performance monitoring of a vast array of small projects (in contrast to a single larger ones with grey concrete infrastructure) is essential to ensuring the effectiveness of community-wide programs.

In Chicago they've launched a widespread initiative to test these kinds of low impact developments (LIDs) that have been implemented by the city, monitoring them with sensors to select the best solutions. Read more about this comprehensive effort in a recent report from Forester Network and Stormwater Magazine:

"As with many other cities that have combined sanitary and storm sewer systems, Chicago has a combined sewer overflow problem, with an average of more than 60 overflows a year. And,as many other cities are doing, it’s turning to green infrastructure to help solve the problem—infiltrating as much water as possible to keep runoff out of the now-undersized and overburdened sewer system during storms..." More 

http://foresternetwork.com/daily/water/stormwater/the-future-looks-smaller