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- All Subjects: green infrastructure
- Creators: Cheng, Chingwen
- Resource Type: Text
As sustainability grows in popularity, it is important to understand what may influence people’s perceptions of the environment so that knowledge of how to motivate people to engage in sustainable practices is obtained. This project investigates people's perceptions on green infrastructure in relation to people’s motivation in order to engage in pro-environmental behavior. This study employs an online survey sent to student athletes at Arizona State University followed up by an semi-constructed interview to understand what kind of access these athletes had to green infrastructure while growing up, how much they value the environment today, and whether or not they attribute their current perceptions of the environment to their childhood access to green infrastructure. Findings suggest that there may be a relationship between student athletes’ access to green infrastructure and a higher value of the environment but only in those who are knowledgeable about how green infrastructure can impact the human population. By showing a possible correlation between access to green infrastructure and motivation to conserve the environment, this study shows the importance of environmental design and how the built environment influences people’s perceptions and behavior toward environmental sustainability.
The first paper is based on a systematic literature review where evidence from morphological mitigation strategies in HUDs were critically reviewed, synthesized and integrated. Metrics, measurements, and methods were extracted to examine the applicability of the different strategies, and a content synthesis identified the levels of strategy success. Collective challenges and uncertainties were interpreted to compare aspirational goals from actualities of morphological mitigation strategies.
The second paper unpacks the relationship of urban morphological attributes in influencing thermal conditions to assess latent magnitudes of heat amelioration strategies. Mindful of the challenges presented in the first study, a 92-day summer field-measurement campaign captured system dynamics of urban thermal stimuli within sub-diurnal phenomena. A composite data set of sub-hourly air temperature measurements with sub-meter morphological attributes was built, statistically analyzed, and modeled. Morphological mediation effects were found to vary hourly with different patterns under varying weather conditions in non-linear associations. Results suggest mitigation interventions be investigated and later tested on a site- use and time-use basis.
The third paper concludes with a simulation-based study to conform on the collective findings of the earlier studies. The microclimate model ENVI-met 4.4, combined with field measurements, was used to simulate the effect of rooftop shade-sails in cooling the near ground thermal environment. Results showed significant cooling effects and thus presented a novel shading approach that challenges orthodox mitigation strategies in HUDs.
Green infrastructure serves as a critical no-regret strategy to address climate change mitigation and adaptation in climate action plans. Climate justice refers to the distribution of climate change-induced environmental hazards (e.g., increased frequency and intensity of floods) among socially vulnerable groups. Yet no index has addressed both climate justice and green infrastructure planning jointly in the USA. This paper proposes a spatial climate justice and green infrastructure assessment framework to understand social-ecological vulnerability under the impacts of climate change. The Climate Justice Index ranks places based on their exposure to climate change-induced flooding, and water contamination aggravated by floods, through hydrological modelling, GIS spatial analysis and statistical methodologies. The Green Infrastructure Index ranks access to biophysical adaptive capacity for climate change. A case study for the Huron River watershed in Michigan, USA, illustrates that climate justice hotspots are concentrated in large cities; yet these communities have the least access to green infrastructure. This study demonstrates the value of using GIS to assess the spatial distribution of climate justice in green infrastructure planning and thereby to prioritize infrastructure investment while addressing equity in climate change adaptation.