LivGBGI: Living lab demonstration of green-blue-grey infrastructure’s multiple co-benefits

Globally accelerated urbanisation and the ageing population make natural hazards a significant threat to humans. In response to this, green-blue-grey infrastructure (GBGI), e.g., green wall, urban and pocket parks, urban forest, roadside trees, can reduce the onset and propagation probability of natural hazards (heatwaves, floods, and drought) while providing multiple co-benefits such as reducing traffic noise levels, air pollution, enhancing the biodiversity.

In this regard, the LivGBGI project's ambition is to test, demonstrate, monitor and evaluate multiple benefits and effectiveness of GBGI against hydro-meteorological hazards (heatwaves, droughts, and floods), and environmental (noise) hazards using the novel approach of a living lab called “Guildford Living Lab (GLL)”.

The main objective of the LivGBGI project is to build evidence for the multi-functional benefits of GBGI against heatwaves and cascading hazards such as drought and flood risk, noise pollution and associated human health impairments. The specific objectives of the LivGBGI are to:

• Evaluate GBGI’s direct benefits in reducing heatwave impacts through direct monitoring from the existing Guildford Living Lab’s sensor network.
• Analyse GBGI’s co-benefits in reducing hydro-meteorological (drought and flood) and environmental (noise) through modelling.
• Evaluate GBGI’s transferability, up scalability, and replicability (SO1 and SO2 results) to other, unstudied areas through modelling.
• Develop a recommendation guide to help assess the effectiveness of multi-functional GBGI and ease its future implementation and upscaling.