GreenPlan-IT Tracker

This technical memo describes the purpose, functions, and structure associated with the newest addition to the GreenPlan-IT Toolset, the GreenPlan-IT Tracker. It also shares the opportunities for further enhancement and how the tool can operate in concert with existing resources. Furthermore, this memo describes a licensing plan that would permit municipalities to use the tool in an ongoing way that scales to their needs. The memo concludes with a provisional roadmap for the development of future features and technical details describing the tool’s platform and data structures.

About the GreenPlan-IT Toolkit

Municipalities across the state and beyond are carefully planning and implementing green infrastructure in their developed landscape to restore key aspects of the natural water cycle. Green infrastructure helps to achieve stormwater attenuation and contaminant filtration by increasing the pervious surfaces in often sophisticated ways. Additionally, green infrastructure features, as city dwellers have come to realize, demonstrate multiple benefits in addition to improving surface porosity, such as peak, volume, and load reductions, urban heat island mitigation, traffic calming, carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat, natural aesthetics, and others. The benefits are substantial, but so are the potential costs. GreenPlan-IT helps planners to make smart decisions in the types and locations of green infrastructure, minimizing effort and cost while maximizing the effectiveness of the public and private investments.

GreenPlan-IT modules are focused on green infrastructure planning and assessment, including the Site Locator Tool, Modeler, and Optimizer tools. Together the modular toolkit can be used to take a city from a position of not knowing where to consider GI placement (a daunting position given the MRP C3 and C11/12 requirements), to a plan that includes a list and map of feasible locations and a map of baseline flow and pollutant load conditions, and a selected optimal set of placement locations for achieving flow and load reductions at minimal cost. Now, with the advent of the GreenPlan-IT Tracker, there is also a web based tracker for quantifying and communicating the locations, types, and treatment areas of GI installations (the outputs of all the planning efforts) and quantifying the peak flows, volumes, and loads reduced (the outcomes of all the implementation and cost expenditure that the community is asking for).