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1. Urban soils in a historically industrial city: patterns of trace metals in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ac7cc2  

   Maxim, Alexandra; Bain, Daniel J.; Burgess, Jonathan (July 2022, Environmental Research Communications)

   Abstract The distribution of legacy heavy metals in industrial city soils is not well documented. Therefore, fundamental details such as the ‘background’ (i.e., non-road/non-dripline) concentration of trace metals in urban soils are uncertain. While there has been a strong focus on mapping lead contamination near roads and residences, these studies are generally not placed in the context of the urban background. In this study, ‘background’ distributions of urban relevant trace metals: arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, and zinc were mapped based on soil samples collected throughout Pittsburgh. Distinct spatial patterns were revealed: contamination is elevated in the eastern portion of the study area, driven by dominant wind patterns and historical coking activities in low-lying areas (paleochannels), areas subject to atmospheric temperature inversions that focus air contamination. The mixing analysis revealed spatial structures in contributions of industrial activities to metal soil contamination. In particular, regions enriched in cadmium relative to zinc (i.e., Zn:Cd<317) were located near historical coking operations, and areas enriched in lead relative to zinc (Pb:Zn>1) were located in areas with historical secondary lead smelters. These results suggest a comprehensive accounting of the trace metals concentrations in background soils has important implications for the assessment of exposure risk in populations residing in historically industrial areas. Relatively sparse sampling of background conditions in urban systems can indicate patterns of legacy contamination and attribute this contamination to historical sources. 

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2. Spring water discharge and metal enrichment in urban soils

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ad7f2d  

   Mullins, Angela_R; Bain, Daniel_J (October 2024, Environmental Research Communications)

   Abstract Urban centers have inherited a unique mix of persistent contamination that impacts interactions among urban soil and groundwater systems. In particular, the potential for urban groundwater to transport contaminants from surface sources through the subsurface environment and ultimately to soils is not well understood. Studies have focused on specific ‘natural’ mechanisms driving distribution of metals in urban soils. However, very few studies have examined the accumulation of contamination in soils at groundwater discharge locations (springs) and the potential for groundwater to redistribute urban legacy contaminants far from the source. Soil transects straddling four groundwater springs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania were sampled to evaluate patterns resulting from contaminated groundwater discharge on urban soils. Metal concentrations were measured in pore water and compared with concentrations observed in total digestions and exchangeable extractions (acetic acid) of the soil. Across the springs Co, Cr, Ni, and V (metals often used in steel alloys) were elevated downslope, suggesting contaminated groundwater discharge enriches trace metals in these locations. These processes create unexpected biogeochemical patterns on the landscape and have the potential to create hotspots of soil metal contamination at predictable points across the urban landscape. 

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3. Integrating the Spatial Configurations of Green and Gray Infrastructure in Urban Stormwater Networks

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR034796  

   Chen, Xiating; Davitt‐Liu, Indigo; Erickson, Andrew J.; Feng, Xue (December 2023, Water Resources Research)

   Abstract Green infrastructure (GI) practices improve stormwater quality and reduce urban flooding, but as urban hydrology is highly controlled by its associated gray infrastructure (e.g., stormwater pipe network), GI's watershed‐scale performance depends on its siting within its associated watershed. Although many stormwater practitioners have begun considering GI's spatial configuration within a larger watershed, few approaches allow for flexible scenario exploration, which can untangle GI's interaction with gray infrastructure network and assess its effects on watershed hydrology. To address the gap in integrated gray‐green infrastructure planning, we used an exploratory model to examine gray‐green infrastructure performance using synthetic stormwater networks with varying degrees of flow path meandering, informed by analysis on stormwater networks from the Minneapolis‐St. Paul Metropolitan Area, MN, USA. Superimposed with different coverage and placements of GI (e.g., bioretention cells), these gray‐green stormwater networks are then subjected to different rainfall intensities within Environmental Protection Agency's Storm Water Management Model to simulate their hydrological benefits (e.g., peak flow reduction, flood reduction). Although only limited choices of green and gray infrastructure were explored, the results show that the gray infrastructure's spatial configuration can introduce tradeoffs between increased peak flow and increased flooding, and further interacts with GI coverage and placement to reduce peak flow and flooding at low rainfall intensity. However, as rainfall intensifies, GI ceases to reduce peak flow. For integrated gray‐green infrastructure planning, our results suggest that physical constraints of the stormwater networks and the range of rainfall intensities must be considered when implementing GI. 

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4. The Eco-Techno Spectrum: Exploring Knowledge Systems’ Challenges in Green Infrastructure Management

   https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v6i1.3491  

   Matsler, A. Marissa; Miller, Thaddeus R.; Groffman, Peter M. (January 2021, Urban Planning)

   null (Ed.)

   Infrastructure crises are not only technical problems for engineers to solve—they also present social, ecological, financial, and political challenges. Addressing infrastructure problems thus requires a robust planning process that includes examination of the social and ecological systems supporting infrastructure, alongside technical systems. An integrative Social, Ecological, and Technological Systems (SETS) analysis of infrastructure solutions can complement the planning process by revealing potential trade-offs that are often overlooked in standard procedures. We explore the interconnected SETS of the infrastructure problem in the US through comparative case studies of green infrastructure (GI) development in Portland and Baltimore. Currently a popular infrastructure solution to a wide variety of urban ills, GI is the use and mimicry of ecological components (e.g., plants) to perform municipal services (e.g., stormwater management). We develop the ecological-technological spectrum—or ‘eco-techno spectrum’—as a framing tool to bridge all three SETS dimensions. The eco-techno spectrum becomes a platform to explore the institutional knowledge system dynamics of GI development where social dimensions are organized across ecological and technological aspects of GI, exposing how governance differs across specific forms of ecological and technological hybridity. In this study, we highlight the knowledge system challenges of urban planning institutions as a key consideration in the realization of innovative infrastructure crisis ‘fixes.’ Disconnected definition and measurement of GI emerge as two distinct challenges across the knowledge systems examined. By revealing and discussing these challenges, we can begin to recognize—and better plan for—gaps in municipal planning knowledge systems, promoting decisions that address the roots of infrastructure crises rather than treating only their symptoms. 

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5. GUIDES: Geospatial Urban Infrastructure Data Engineering Solutions

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3139958.3139968  

   Balasubramani, B. S.; Belingheri, O.; Boria, E. S.; Cruz, I. F.; Derrible, S.; Siciliano, M. D. (October 2017, 25th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems)

   The digitization of legacy infrastructure constitutes an important component of smart cities. While most cities worldwide possess digital maps of their transportation infrastructure, few have accurate digital information on their electric, natural gas, telecom, water, wastewater, and district heating and cooling systems. Digitizing data on legacy infrastructure systems comes with several challenges such as missing data, data conversion issues, data inconsistency, differences in the data format, spatio-temporal resolutions, structure, semantics and syntax, difficulty in providing controlled access to the datasets, and so on. Therefore, we introduce GUIDES, a new data conversion and management framework for urban infrastructure systems, which is comprised of big data analytics, efficient data management techniques, semantic web technologies, methods to ensure information security, and tools that aid visual analytics. The proposed framework facilitates: (i) mapping of urban infrastructure systems; (ii) integration of heterogeneous geospatial data; (iii) a secured way of storing, analyzing and querying data while preserving the semantics; (iv) qualitative and quantitative analysis over several spatio-temporal resolutions; and (v) visualization of static (e.g., land use) and dynamic (e.g., road traffic) information. 

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