Integrated Water & Urban Systems (GGBS Framework)

The Green–Grey–Blue–Smart (GGBS) Framework represents a systems-based approach to understanding and managing water and urban environments. It emphasizes the interactions among natural processes, engineered infrastructure, blue systems (rivers, estuaries, coasts), and smart, data-informed tools. This integrated perspective supports planning and resilience across pluvial, fluvial, and coastal contexts.

The GGBS concepts synthesize insights from work on stormwater systems, hydrology and hydraulics, estuarine and coastal processes, watershed-scale environmental studies, and multi-hazard resilience.

Research Themes

  • Integrated planning across green, grey, blue, and smart elements
  • Multi-hazard resilience spanning pluvial, fluvial, and coastal domains
  • Cross-disciplinary synthesis in water, environmental, and urban systems
  • Linkages among stormwater, watershed, estuarine, and coastal processes
  • Nature-based and engineered solutions for resilience
  • Smart and data-informed tools supporting analysis and planning
  • Conceptual frameworks that unify cross-scale processes and infrastructure

Selected Contributions

Representative areas of work related to integrated water and urban systems include:

  • Development of conceptual frameworks connecting hydrology, hydraulics, green infrastructure, blue systems, and smart technologies
  • Integration of watershed, estuarine, and coastal modeling to support multi-hazard assessment
  • Basin- and region-scale synthesis efforts, including applications in the United States and international settings
  • Evaluation of green–grey–blue infrastructure portfolios for stormwater, flood, and coastal resilience
  • Contributions to interdisciplinary planning dialogs that connect inland and coastal systems
  • Teaching materials and research outputs that highlight system-level connections across domains

Selected publications illustrating integrated approaches and cross-scale system behavior will be added here.

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