Economic Assessment of Urban Stormwater Measures: The Case of Small Infiltration Areas in Prague

Different kinds of sustainable stormwater infrastructure measures have been adopted due to evidence of increasing extreme weather events in many countries. Despite the growing indication of the effectiveness of these measures, research on their cost-effectiveness is rare in central Europe. I monetarily assessed the costs and benefits of one kind of sustainable stormwater infrastructure measure — Infiltration Areas (IA) — built in Prague, Czech Republic. Five scenarios were assessed to test the robustness of the result by changing parameters in the evaluation. Although the construction costs of the assessed IAs were high and some of the project’s benefits were not monetarily evaluated, the IAs’ benefits make a case for their investment in a relatively short period. The study demonstrated that the benefits of IAs exceeded their costs within a varying timeframe, ranging from the first year to between the third and fifth years, depending on the specific project parameters. This work contributes to the literature by presenting a unique case study of applications in IAs in practice, focusing on documenting their benefits and costs in the Czech Republic.