GeoDesigning Green Infrastructure for Stormwater Management in Green Bay, WI

Green Bay is a large freshwater estuary on the northwest side of Lake Michigan. The city of Green Bay, Wisconsin is located at the mouth of the Fox River, where it flows into the southern tip of Green Bay. The landscape along the southern shore of Green Bay is characterized by low, flat topography and is vulnerable to flooding from multiple sources. This includes heavy downpours directly over the urban area, riverine flooding, and coastal flooding from storms blowing from the northeast during periods of high Lake Michigan water levels. Northeastern Wisconsin has seen fewer extreme precipitation events than the rest of the state in past decades, but this has changed in the past two years. Green infrastructure has been used in many communities to reduce flooding impacts from severe storm events such as the ones seen recently in Green Bay. The focus of this project was to determine where green infrastructure features can be placed and what their impact on flood reduction is. This analysis was assisted by the GeoPlanner for ArcGIS software, in which a new project template was created that incorporated green infrastructure strategies for stormwater into the design layers. In order to assess the cumulative impact of these strategies, they were assigned water capture rates and cost estimates based on a literature review of green infrastructure plans across the country. Key performance indicators fed into the dashboard where they were compared to rainfall calculations based on mid-century precipitation estimates. This presentation will showcase a multi-scalar geodesign process to measure how green infrastructure can make a difference to reduce flooding at the site, neighborhood, sewershed and municipal levels. It focuses on using municipal and county datasets to increase the living infrastructure to increase infiltration, evapotranspiration, and interception of stormwater. By zooming into one neighborhood that experiences a significant amount of flooding, we were able to create different green infrastructure scenarios to compare how much stormwater could be captured between scenarios as well as how they held up to future precipitation estimates. The purpose of using geoplanner was to bring this new technology to the City of Green Bay to facilitate the process in developing a green infrastructure plan. It was to encourage intergovernmental and organizational collaboration. Additionally, the hope was to attempt to use the tool for public engagement, outreach, and communication. However, since the pandemic, these two parts of the project have stalled. This presentation will talk about how we navigated this situation as well. Looking to future estimates of precipitation will be important in planning for stormwater management. Understanding where to place and where green infrastructure can create the greatest impact is invaluable. GeoPlanner can assist in this process through the use of broadscale layers in combination with local and municipal data sets. This project can be used as a template for other cities looking to reduce flooding and increase their green infrastructure capacity. It can help with visualizing estimates of cumulative impacts, be used to persuade decision-makers of the benefits of green infrastructure, assist with the public outreach and education process, and do scenario planning and comparative analysis. This type of scenario planning can assist in the adaptation and mitigation process for precipitation increases as a result of climate change. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow us on Social Media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/Esri Facebook: https://facebook.com/EsriGIS LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/esri Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/esrigram The Science of Where: http://www.esri.com