Whole Life Costing and Multiple Benefits of Sustainable Drainage

• Published in: Sustainable Surface Water Management pp. 233 - 244
• Main Author: Lamond, Jessica E
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 14.10.2016
• Subjects: CIRIA BeST tool; green infrastructure valuation toolkit; sustainable drainage systems; sustainable surface water management; whole life costing
• ISBN: 9781118897706; 1118897706
• DOI: 10.1002/9781118897690.ch17

This chapter discusses the most common and established, as well as emerging trends and summarises recent findings and literature around cost‐benefit whole life costing (WLC) and valuation of multiple benefits. It explores relevant literature and touches on a variety of tools that can contribute to the estimation of the costs of implementing and maintaining sustainable drainage systems (SuDS), and the evaluation of flood damage reduction, stormwater management and other benefits associated with these approaches. The increasing use of benefits transfer via tools such as the CIRIA BeST tool, and green infrastructure valuation toolkit can help in making the case for SuDS, but it is important to continue to add to the evidence base supporting such tools given the scarcity of studies that demonstrate robust estimates of benefits achieved and even of the ongoing cost of maintaining SuDS under differing climatic and locational factors.