Get to know N-EWN

A community of researchers, practitioners, and educators working together to advance the practice of natural infrastructure.

We work across four main branches

In order to help facilitate the widespread adoption of natural infrastructure practices across the United States, we’ve identified four main areas that need additional work:

Developing methods and standards

New tools, techniques and guidance are needed to effectively plan, design, construct and operate natural infrastructure at different scales

Assessing benefits and costs

Natural infrastructure provides communities with a broad array of economic, environmental and social benefits. Improved approaches are needed to evaluate, quantify and forecast these benefits to support planning and decision making

Monitoring performance and outcomes

Technically sound, efficient and applicable methods are needed to track natural infrastructure performance over time, develop the evidence base for future designs, ensure compliance with policy and inform project operations and adaptive management

Integrating people and policy

Providing infrastructure that supports human wellbeing and equitably meets the needs of diverse communities requires integration of human values, attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and policies with modern communication and collaboration practices


Combining a diversity of on-the-ground experience with interdisciplinary teams.

The N-EWN community is made up of over 30 partners from industry, academia and the non-profit sector.

What N-EWN’s been up to:

  • What is Infrastructure?

    What is Infrastructure?

    Head over to our partners at the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems to learn about how natural systems can be included in the definition of infrastructure. We’ve broadened the definition to include the natural systems that help support our society by transporting and purifying drinking water, absorbing run off, preventing erosion and absorbing carbon dioxide–to…

  • Join the N-EWN team!  Post-doctoral positions available.

    Join the N-EWN team! Post-doctoral positions available.

    Modeling and Monitoring Position  https://www.ugajobsearch.com/postings/222002 The College of Engineering wishes to appoint a Post-Doctoral Scholar to work on a grant funded research project: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – Engineering with Nature Initiative for a period of 1 year with additional employment dependent on the needs of the project. In this role they will be…

  • November 2021 Knowledge Series: Operationalizing Equity for Integrated Water Resources

    November 2021 Knowledge Series: Operationalizing Equity for Integrated Water Resources

    Don Nelson, UGA Advancing social equity has been implicitly and explicitly central to international water resources policy for decades. However, water resources planning sometimes fail to fully embrace this crucial concept. Inclusion of equity within water resources infrastructure is often inhibited by an incomplete conceptual understanding of equity, a perceived lack of quantitative and qualitative…

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