2/3/2017 Project funded by UB RENEW Institute

A project, “Integrated decision support for urban land use, green infrastructure and stormwater management”, is funded by UB RENEW Institute seed grant.

The project’s principal investigator is Zhenduo Zhu, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering. Co-principal investigators are L. Shawn Matott, PhD, computational scientist in UB’s Center for Computational Research; Zoé Hamstead, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning; and Alan Rabideau, PhD, professor in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering.

Green infrastructure, such as rain barrels, permeable pavement and green streets, can help revitalize communities by reducing sewage overflows, beautifying neighborhoods, increasing property values and improving the health of nearby lakes and rivers. However, determining the proper green infrastructure investment to balance competing land uses is challenging. Leaders of this project will develop new tools for applying mathematical optimization to aid in stormwater management and green infrastructure planning. They will also develop a decision support framework in which these tools can inform and be informed by a holistic stakeholder-driven collaborative planning process. As such, the framework will incorporate a variety of socio-political factors and tradeoffs that are not easily or traditionally incorporated into mathematical optimization. Leaders will demonstrate the framework and associated tools by applying them to a holistic suitability analysis for vacant land use in Buffalo, New York.