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:
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Dunes: The resilient ecosystems at work under the sand
Dunes have garnered quite a bit of attention this year. Sure, some of that is due to the science fiction series of the same name– but we think the real-life dunes are much cooler. And don’t worry, there are no giant sandworms here. Dunes are mounds or ridges that form when sand is moved by…
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Levee setbacks have a lot of potential co-benefits. How can we maximize them?
In a new paper published this month in WIREs Water, a team including partners from the University of Georgia Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems and US Army Corps of Engineers’ Engineering With Nature® program review the myriad of benefits that have been associated with an increasingly popular nature-based solution: levee setbacks. A levee is an…
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University of Georgia introduces Natural Infrastructure Certificate for training interdisciplinary grad students
This coming fall, the University of Georgia Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems will introduce the Natural Infrastructure Graduate Certificate, a set of coursework designed for students from all disciplines to learn the skills and expertise necessary to address complex infrastructure challenges using nature-based solutions (NbS) and Engineering With Nature® (EWN) principles. “We’re very excited to…
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