Green Plan-IT Application Report for the East Bay Corridors Initiative

Regional planning of Green Infrastructure (GI) is an important aspect of building in or retrofitting GI and other green spaces across municipal jurisdictions. This level of planning allows for GI to be implemented according to natural boundaries and builds important partnerships across municipalities. The East Bay Corridors Initiative is a unique partnership across 13 jurisdictions, county and regional agencies, as well as community groups and businesses to plan new housing, create job opportunities, and improve parks and streets with linkages to essential services (ABAG 2016). The Initiative covers a large swath of the East Bay of San Francisco Bay, CA from Rodeo in the North to Union City in the South and focuses on Priority Development Areas (PDAs) and transportation linkages. In addition to the above focus, the Initiative will also look at opportunities for GI implementation across the Corridor. The Resilience priority within the Initiative focuses on sustainable infrastructure including regional GI implementation, green streets, and stormwater/flooding mitigation (ABAG 2016). The objective of this project was to use GreenPlan-IT, a planning tool developed by the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), to identify feasible GI locations within the East Bay Corridor footprint. Results from the application of the Site Locator Tool will be used to: 1) identify potential green infrastructure projects for the Corridor’s sustainable infrastructure planning efforts, including the development of information for municipal and regional GI Master Plans and Stormwater Resources Plans; and 2) potentially help comply with municipal Stormwater Permit requirements. 

GreenPlan-IT is a planning level tool that was developed over the past five years with strong Bay Area stakeholder consultation and designed to support the cost-effective selection and placement of green infrastructure in urban watersheds through a combination of GIS analysis, watershed modeling, optimization techniques, and data visualization. Structurally, GreenPlan-IT comprises four standalone tools: (a) a GIS-based Site Locator Tool that combines the physical properties of different GI types with local and regional GIS information to identify and rank potential GI locations; (b) a Modeling Tool that is built on EPA’s SWMM5 (Rossman, 2010) to establish baseline conditions and quantify anticipated runoff and pollutant load reductions from GI sites; (c) an Optimization Tool that uses a cost-benefit analysis to identify the best combinations of GI types and number of sites within a study area for achieving flow and/or load reduction goals; and (d) a tracker tool that is used to track GI implementation and report the cumulative programmatic outcomes for regulatory compliance and other communication needs. The Toolkit package, consisting of the software, companion user manuals, and demonstration report, is available on the GreenPlan-IT web site hosted by SFEI.