On behalf of the U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers (USACE) Institute of Water Resources, Abt Global supports the Natural and Nature-Based Features (NNBF) task force for post-Hurricane Sandy recovery in the North Atlantic by developing a means to identify and evaluate opportunities for using NNBF to support coastal resilience and risk reduction in the context of planning, construction, and operations and maintenance activities.

Abt also supports the Systems Approach to Geomorphic Engineering (SAGE), an interagency and inter-organizational effort to build resilience and address coastal transformation by integrating green and grey infrastructure solutions. For example, in support of this effort, we completed an analysis of potential green and grey infrastructure options by:

• Reviewing studies of the effects of green and hybrid infrastructure on flood risk, the magnitude of the benefits, the nature of the evidence for risk reduction, the impact on key physical and biological processes, and the characteristics of the infrastructure considered to contribute to the benefit;
• Developing evidence-based lists of key physical and biological metrics for natural infrastructure contributing to flood risk reduction and hybrid projects; and
• Summarizing findings of the literature review, implications of the selected metrics, influence on flood risk reduction and ecosystem benefits, and potential applicability.