Stone Living Lab Announces Inaugural Research Award

We are delighted to announce the recipient of the inaugural Stone Living Lab Pilot Research Award: Dr. Yang Yang, School for the Environment, UMass Boston. Dr. Yang’s project will develop an AI-enabled smartphone monitoring system that helps communities and stormwater managers rapidly identify maintenance needs in green stormwater infrastructure, improving its long-term performance and resilience.

The Stone Living Lab Pilot Research Program provides $20,000 in seed funding to support short-term, innovative research that advances the Lab’s mission of developing and scaling nature-based approaches for coastal resilience. The Program is designed to catalyze new research directions, generate preliminary data, and foster interdisciplinary collaboration, with the one-year pilot funding intended to lay the foundation for future external funding, peer-reviewed publications, and translation into policy and practice.

Awarded Project

Smart Monitoring for Long-Term Performance of Green Stormwater Infrastructure: Linking Smartphone Images, Hydrologic Screening, and Maintenance Decisions

Rain gardens, bioswales, and other green stormwater infrastructure help cities absorb stormwater, reduce flooding, limit sewer overflows, and filter pollution before it reaches local waterways. However, these systems only work well over time if they are inspected and maintained. This Stone Living Lab pilot will develop and test a smartphone-based monitoring workflow that allows students, residents, community groups, and stormwater managers to take standardized site photos and record field notes. The project will use Vision-Language Models (i.e., software that can interpret both images and text) to identify visible maintenance concerns such as blocked inlets, sediment buildup, unhealthy vegetation, litter, standing water, and erosion. The team will survey sites in Boston and New York City and conduct focused field checks at selected Boston sites to connect visual conditions with drainage performance. The goal is to help communities and managers detect maintenance needs earlier and keep nature-based stormwater systems functioning effectively.

Congratulations to Dr. Yang! We look forward to following the project’s progress and seeing how this exciting work contributes to the future of smart, data-driven management of green stormwater infrastructure.