ABSTRACT
Green infrastructure and Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are at the pinpoint of the urban sustainable development for their multiple benefits to urban systems. Their multifunctional nature has led experts to develop a plethora of methodological frameworks for the evaluation of their effectiveness in diverse site-specific applications. The purpose of this research is twofold; first, to explore the various assessment approaches for green infrastructure, their main features and issues, as highlighted by a review of the current literature, and second, to propose a novel holistic methodological approach for the NBS modeling, which responds to the identified challenges, such as the dynamic aspect, the high complexity level, and most importantly, the integration of both quantitative and qualitative features. The findings of this work shed light on the variety of the existing performance assessment frameworks and their current evolution, while the proposed modeling approach offers a multi-objective and multi-dimensional framework for the NBS design, planning and management.
