The Climate Resilience Toolkit website provides a link to NOAA’s guide to green infrastructure. The framework outlined in the guide can be adapted for the user’s purposes to inform planning-scale assessments and discussion about green infrastructure options to mitigate flooding and provide other watershed benefits.

Following a step-by-step, watershed-based approach, the document guides users through documenting the costs of flooding, projecting increased flooding and associated costs under future land use and climate conditions, and calculating benefits and costs of reducing flooding with green infrastructure over the long term.

The guide draws from four case studies to provide key considerations, recommended expertise, practical implementation tips, and lessons learned. The document outlines a six-step process, with specific tasks associated with each step. By following the guide’s six steps for developing a green infrastructure strategy-including estimation of associated costs and benefits over a chosen planning horizon-communities can demonstrate the cost effectiveness of implementing green infrastructure projects. The guide does not compare costs between traditional gray and green infrastructure.

Access to case studies and other key resources are provided in the end of the guide as well.

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