Community-enabled life-cycle assessment Stormwater Infrastructure Costs (CLASIC) tool

Abstract

Urbanization, land use change, and climate change have profound effects on urban stormwater. This study develops the Community-enabled Life-cycle Analysis of Stormwater Infrastructure Costs (CLASIC) software to support decisions about stormwater control infrastructure over a range of alternative scenarios at the neighborhood to municipal scales. The tool quantifies hydrologic and stormwater quality performance, life-cycle costs, and triple-bottom-line social, economic, and environmental co-benefits of green, gray, and hybrid green-gray stormwater practices. CLASIC is deployed as a cloud-based web-tool, with a geographical information system (GIS) enabled interface, and built-in computing services to characterize terrain, soil, land use, and climatic conditions using publicly available datasets, and to parameterize and execute the modeling modules. Three community level case studies in the United States illustrate the utility of CLASIC for climate change assessments, green infrastructure implementation for community redevelopment, and assessment of the effects of changes in rainfall characteristics on the performance of stormwater practices.