Blue-green infrastructure (BGI), including sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and natural flood management (NFM) provides multiple benefits ranging from public health to minimising the risks of flooding. These systems based on NFM and SuDS provide significantly more benefits than those expected from a conventional, piped approach to drainage or traditional flood management infrastructure. This is possible because SuDS and NFM invariably enhance the area being developed and contribute to economic development and environmental quality.

CIRIA has developed B£ST as a tool and guidance (W047) to support practitioners estimating the benefits that BGI can create. Valuing the type and magnitude of these benefits can otherwise be difficult, often requiring specialist economic inputs. Questions are often asked about the benefits BGI solutions may bring, their size and their value. Understanding these benefits can help to identify interested stakeholders and encourage a partnership approach to funding schemes.

B£ST provides a structured approach to evaluating a wide range of benefits. It follows a simple structure, commencing with a simple screening process and qualitative assessment to identify the benefits to evaluate further. Where feasible, it provides support to help quantify and monetise over 19 benefits and provides a variety of ways for this information to be presented and shared.

Please visit the B£ST pages on susdrain: https://www.susdrain.org/resources/best.html

• Introduce the latest version of the B£ST tool and guidance
• Demonstrate how recent improvements have made the tool better
• Provide a worked example of use of the tool in evaluating the benefits of a case study

           Bruce Horton, Stantec

           Applying B£ST: A run-through the tool

           Chris Digman, Stantec

           Case study: A partnership-based habitat creation scheme in Surrey

           Bruce Horton, Stantec and Viv Levy, Environment Agency