New York City Mayor's Office of Sustainability
At a Glance
Industry
Government/Public Administration
Project Type
Engagement and Behavior Change
Year
2020
Location
New York, NY
Summary
Bobuchi Ken-Opurum developed methods for the NYC Mayor’s Office of Resiliency to quantify and justify resiliency design solutions in capital projects.
Goals
Capital agencies want to present consistent and transparent monetary quantification of benefits of resilient design elements when making funding requests to the City’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). New York City’s capital agencies are also interested in bringing equity to the forefront of resilience investments. Consequently, Bobuchi Ken-Opurum was enlisted to develop a decision support tool for assigning monetary values to benefits of resilient design practices and guide criteria for capital work needed to adapt an asset or neighborhood to climate change.
Solutions
Bobuchi approached the research using a four-part process:
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Designed an interface with instructions to guide the future development of the GIS integrated decision support tool for city agencies.
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Identified more criteria for achieving equity goals in resiliency projects as part of the GIS integrated tool.
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Developed a quantitative benefits calculator using Excel. The calculator has of standardized formulas that will help MOR and its intra-agencies quantify resiliency benefits. Excel as a program has a relatively low learning curve and easy to use interface that can be converted to an agency unique tool in the future.
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Determined the monetary values of resiliency benefits of a project as it relates to the triple bottom line.
Impact
By using GIS Components, the recommended decision support tool has the potential to visually highlight the risks of climate stressors on geographical regions thereby providing further context on the environmental, economic, health and social vulnerabilities to residents on a project site and its surrounding geographical area.
Combined with standardized formulas, the tool can streamline the quantitative analysis process across the different agencies. The standard formulas will be more efficient for design teams to perform qualitative cost-benefit analysis and determining dollar values allows teams to justify benefits through uncertainty.