WE&RF Research Will Help Communities With Green And Gray Infrastructure Planning

The Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WE&RF) recently awarded a contract to Geosyntec Consultants in association with Wright Water Engineers, Inc. for a research project entitled Data Analysis and Standardization to Support “Community-Enabled Lifecycle Analysis of Stormwater Infrastructure Costs (CLASIC)" (LCASW7R16). The research will analyze, standardize, and compile data collected by the CLASIC team into a relational cost database that can be linked to the International Stormwater BMP database and used to support CLASIC tool development and implementation. The goal of CLASIC is to develop resources and tools that can be used by communities interested in long-term planning of green and gray infrastructure and integrated stormwater management.

The objective for the Data Analysis and Standardization task is to compile and analyze available cost data for various types of stormwater infrastructure and support the development and real-time operation of an integrated decision support system in the form of a separate database. There are several reasons for creating a separate relational cost database:

• It will include data on both green and gray infrastructure.
• The design and construction information necessary for cost tracking will be more detailed.
• It will eliminate the need to revise existing spreadsheets and guides in the BMP database.

The compilation and standardization of performance and cost data into a relational database will not only support the decision support tools developed for the overall CLASIC project, but would also support independent infrastructure planning and tool development efforts. With project completion, BMP construction and maintenance cost information will be assembled and linked to existing performance data in the International Stormwater BMP database. The result will support a more comprehensive assessment of the cost effectiveness of green infrastructure.

The project is expected to be run over the next two years.

About The Water Environment & Reuse Foundation
The Water Environment & Reuse Foundation (WE&RF) is a nonprofit (501c3) organization officially formed in July 2016 as the result of the merger of the Water Environment Research Foundation and the WateReuse Research Foundation. The merged research foundation, with a combined research portfolio representing over $200M, conducts research to treat and recover beneficial materials from wastewater, stormwater, and seawater including water, nutrients, energy, and biosolids.