Abstract:

Galena Park is a space-constrained and overly developed community home to one of the world’s largest collections of petrochemical complexes. This makes it challenging to implement green infrastructure (GI) in retrofit projects to reduce flooding and pollution. To respond to this challenge, researchers developed an adaptive and flexible toolkit, the Green Infrastructure Adaptive Stormbox, that employs a combination of flood-proofing tools and pollution-relief techniques and can be applied broadly, based on both on-ground spatial size and underground depth to existing infrastructure. We assessed the performance of the proposed master plan in flood and nonpoint source pollutant reduction by using Delft3D-FM coupled with the Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment Low Impact Development (L-THIA). While the use of landscape performance tools which seek to quantify the impacts of designs and plans on cities has rapidly increased in recent years, no research has coupled their plans with sophisticated modeling techniques to simultaneously evaluate the impact of design on rainfall-induced inland flooding and hurricane-induced storm surge in any of the current literature. Most studies on flooding for urban planning have focused only on assessing flooding impacts under specific scenarios that are relatively static and have not focused on flooding that may occur at smaller time scales. However, in low-lying coastal areas such as Harris County, TX, determination of the impact of compound flooding from both rainfall-induced inland flooding, hurricane-induced storm surge, as well as the level of mitigation provided by flood reduction master plans is needed. See the related publication for more information on the Galena Park master plan: Zhu, Rui et al. “An Adaptive Toolkit for Projecting the Impact of Green Infrastructure Provisions on Stormwater Runoff and Pollutant Load-A Case Study on the City of Galena Park, Texas, USA.” Landscape architecture frontiers vol. 11,2 (2023): 72-87. doi:10.15302/j-laf-1-040031