An overview of monitoring methods for assessing the performance of nature-based solutions against natural hazards

Kumar, Prashant; Debele, Sisay; Sahani, Jeetendra; Rawat, Nidhi; Martí-Cardona, Belén; Alfieri, Silvia Maria; Basu, Biswajit; Basu, Arunima Sarkar; Bowyer, Paul K.; Charizopoulos, Νikos; Jaakko, Juvonen; Loupis, Michael; Menenti, Massimo; Mickovski, Slobodan B.; Pfeiffer, Jan; Pilla, Francesco; Pröll, Julius; Pulvirenti, Beatrice; Rutzinger, Martin; Sannigrahi, Srikanta; Spyrou, Christos; Tuomenvirta, Heikki; Vojinović, Zoran; Zieher, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103603

Cited by 104 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 208 publications

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“…In particular, spaceborne sensing can be utilised to monitor the area of NBS intervention(s) for a continuous period, starting before the NBS implementation, in order to assess the state modifications of the area over time [15]. Except for detecting the modifications on urban form, EO has the potential to capture the impact of NBS on the hydro-meteorological conditions of urban areas [22]. For instance, specific alternations of urban energy balance (UEB) can be monitored for verifying specific microclimatic targets related to overheating mitigation, especially in case of heat waves, as these alternations can lead to multiple benefits, such as improving the outdoor thermal comfort of citizens [23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Monitoring and evaluation approaches can provide tangible results about NBS efficiency and consequential multiple/multiscale benefits, hence promoting their transferability and wide application [11,22]. Depending on the considered monitoring and evaluation spatial scale, suitable EO approaches for capturing NBS impacts differ significantly, but overall, the underlying information needs to be captured on a finer scale than that of monitoring and evaluation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Monitoring and Evaluating Nature-Based Solutions Implementation in Urban Areas by Means of Earth Observation

et al. 2021

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Climate change influences the vulnerability of urban populations worldwide. To improve their adaptive capacity, the implementation of nature-based solutions (NBS) in urban areas has been identified as an appropriate action, giving urban planning and development an important role towards climate change adaptation/mitigation and risk management and resilience. However, the importance of extensively applying NBS is still underestimated, especially regarding its potential to induce significantly positive environmental and socioeconomic impacts across cities. Concerning environmental impacts, monitoring and evaluation is an important step of NBS management, where earth observation (EO) can contribute. EO is known for providing valuable disaggregated data to assess the modifications caused by NBS implementation in terms of land cover, whereas the potential of EO to uncover the role of NBS in urban metabolism modifications (e.g., energy, water, and carbon fluxes and balances) still remains underexplored. This study reviews the EO potential in the monitoring and evaluation of NBS implementation in cities, indicating that satellite observations combined with data from complementary sources may provide an evidence-based approach in terms of NBS adaptive management. EO-based tools can be applied to assess NBS’ impacts on urban energy, water, and carbon balances, further improving our understanding of urban systems dynamics and supporting sustainable urbanization.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring and Evaluating Nature-Based Solutions Implementation in Urban Areas by Means of Earth Observation

et al. 2021

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“…The implications of these results could have a relevant impact on the natural hazards mitigation policies. This is also evident in recent works about the monitoring and modeling of NBSs [84,85]. OAL and NBS concepts could provide future standards for these policies, delivering easy-to-handle information to decision-makers and stakeholders.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

On the Management of Nature-Based Solutions in Open-Air Laboratories: New Insights and Future Perspectives

et al. 2021

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The adoption of Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) represents a novel means to mitigate natural hazards. In the framework of the OPERANDUM project, this study introduces a methodology to assess the efficiency of the NBSs and a series of Open-Air Laboratories (OALs) regarded as a proof-of-concept for the wider uptake of NBSs. The OALs are located in Finland, Greece, UK, Italy, and Ireland. The methodology is based on a wide modeling activity, incorporated in the context of future climate scenarios. Herein, we present a series of models’ chains able to estimate the efficiency of the NBSs. While the presented models are mainly well-established, their coupling represents a first fundamental step in the study of the long-term efficacy and impact of the NBSs. In the selected sites, NBSs are utilized to cope with distinct natural hazards: floods, droughts, landslides, salt intrusion, and nutrient and sediment loading. The study of the efficacy of NBSs to mitigate these hazards belongs to a series of works devoted to the implementation of NBSs for environmental purposes. Our findings prove that land management plays a crucial role in the process. Specifically, the selected NBSs include intensive forestry; the conversion of urban areas to grassland; dunes; marine seagrass; water retention ponds; live cribwalls; and high-density plantations of woody vegetation and deep-rooted herbaceous vegetation. The management of natural resources should eventually consider the effect of NBSs on urban and rural areas, as their employment is becoming widespread.

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“…This can encourage citizens' involvement and create trust among stakeholders during the NBS implementation phase and beyond ( Kabisch et al, 2017a ; Kumar et al, 2020 ). However, NBS assessment is complex and involves a combination of an eclectic array of quantitative and qualitative variables, some of which are hard to measure by monitoring (e.g., Kumar et al, 2021 ) or subjected to high degrees of uncertainty. Consequently, the use of models can help to deal with such complexity by allowing testing multiple and future socio-ecological scenarios along the projects' life cycle, providing fresh intelligence, facilitating the communication process between stakeholders and thus informing the decision-making process ( Gonzalez-Ollauri et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerous review articles have covered several approaches for the assessment of HMH and their management strategies. A majority of these articles focused on the monitoring methods for NBS assessment ( Kumar et al, 2021 ), HMRs mapping and damage assessment ( Teng et al, 2017 ; Khan et al, 2020 ; Sahani et al, 2019 ), life cycle appraisals including the economic valuation of ecosystem services ( Newman et al, 2017 ; Eckhardt et al, 2019 ; Ovando and Brouwer, 2019 ; Nguyen et al, 2020 ), assessment frameworks for NBS ( Dumitru et al, 2020 ; Shah et al, 2020 ), upscaling and replication of NBS ( Saleh and Weinstein, 2016 ), and real-time forecasting of HMHs and/or HMRs. Zhang and Chui (2019) reviewed and presented models to evaluate the performance of green infrastructure in reducing runoff.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature-based solutions efficiency evaluation against natural hazards: Modelling methods, advantages and limitations

Kumar

Debele

Sahani

et al. 2021

Science of The Total Environment

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110

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Nature-based solutions (NBS) for hydro-meteorological risks (HMRs) reduction and management are becoming increasingly popular, but challenges such as the lack of well-recognised standard methodologies to evaluate their performance and upscale their implementation remain. We systematically evaluate the current state-of-the art on the models and tools that are utilised for the optimum allocation, design and efficiency evaluation of NBS for five HMRs (flooding, droughts, heatwaves, landslides, and storm surges and coastal erosion). We found that methods to assess the complex issue of NBS efficiency and cost-benefits analysis are still in the development stage and they have only been implemented through the methodologies developed for other purposes such as fluid dynamics models in micro and catchment scale contexts. Of the reviewed numerical models and tools MIKE-SHE, SWMM (for floods), ParFlow-TREES, ACRU, SIMGRO (for droughts), WRF, ENVI-met (for heatwaves), FUNWAVE-TVD, BROOK90 (for landslides), TELEMAC and ADCIRC (for storm surges) are more flexible to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of specific NBS such as wetlands, ponds, trees, parks, grass, green roof/walls, tree roots, vegetations, coral reefs, mangroves, sea grasses, oyster reefs, sea salt marshes, sandy beaches and dunes. We conclude that the models and tools that are capable of assessing the multiple benefits, particularly the performance and cost-effectiveness of NBS for HMR reduction and management are not readily available. Thus, our synthesis of modelling methods can facilitate their selection that can maximise opportunities and refute the current political hesitation of NBS deployment compared with grey solutions for HMR management but also for the provision of a wide range of social and economic co-benefits. However, there is still a need for bespoke modelling tools that can holistically assess the various components of NBS from an HMR reduction and management perspective. Such tools can facilitate impact assessment modelling under different NBS scenarios to build a solid evidence base for upscaling and replicating the implementation of NBS.

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An overview of monitoring methods for assessing the performance of nature-based solutions against natural hazards

Cited by 104 publications

References 208 publications

Monitoring and Evaluating Nature-Based Solutions Implementation in Urban Areas by Means of Earth Observation

Monitoring and Evaluating Nature-Based Solutions Implementation in Urban Areas by Means of Earth Observation

On the Management of Nature-Based Solutions in Open-Air Laboratories: New Insights and Future Perspectives

Nature-based solutions efficiency evaluation against natural hazards: Modelling methods, advantages and limitations

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