The Stewardship Effect: Cleaner, Greener, More Consistent Rain Gardens
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Using City of Vancouver’s bio retention assessment data, our project demonstrates that stewarded rain gardens performed better and show dramatically tighter variability, proving that community stewardship drives more reliable green infrastructure.

School:
SFU
Department:
Business Administration
Course:
Data Analytics and Visualization (BUS 336)
Instructors:
- Heba Maghraby
City of Vancouver:
- Julie McManus
Term:
Fall 2025
Summary
Community stewardship should be expanded into underperforming districts, because our box-and-whisker analysis shows that stewarded sites consistently outperform non-stewarded ones with far less variability, meaning more stable long-term maintenance outcomes. To maximize these benefits, the City should introduce stronger volunteer training focused on the components that showed the biggest improvements; rainwater flow, inlet/outlet management, vegetation health, and soil quality, ensuring volunteers can meaningfully support site performance between City maintenance cycles. Finally, future assessments should incorporate biodiversity tracking, such as plant diversity and pollinator presence, to capture ecological benefits that aren’t fully reflected in the current scoring system. Together, these steps would strengthen site health, improve consistency across locations, and deepen community engagement in Vancouver’s Green Rainwater Infrastructure program.
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