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:

  • Stantec Summarizes COP27

    Stantec Summarizes COP27

    N-EWN partner, Stantec, recently attended the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (or Conference of Parties), where they summarized weekly activities and overarching themes in a weekly overview called SCOPE27. Here’s what Stantec had to say about the conference and their involvement: Thirty years ago, the world’s first global environmental treaty acknowledged that earth’s climate…

  • Researcher feature: Charles Van Rees

    Researcher feature: Charles Van Rees

    N-EWN researcher Charles Van Rees was recently featured in an article by the Odum School of Ecology. In the article, he speaks specifically to the power of interdisciplinary research: “We sit there and try to communicate across huge differences in expertise, professional culture and vocabulary, and then we write cool interdisciplinary papers that bring all…

  • S4 E10 – Nature-Based Solutions to Landscape-Architecture Challenges

    S4 E10 – Nature-Based Solutions to Landscape-Architecture Challenges

    In Episode 10, hosts Sarah Thorne and Jeff King, Deputy Lead of the Engineering With Nature® Program at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), are talking with Kotchakorn Voraakhom (“Kotch”), an international member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and founder of Bangkok-based landscape architecture company LANDPROCESS, and Derek Hoeferlin, Chair of the…

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