Strategies for Enhancing the Efficiency of Bioretention Swales and Basins for Urban Stormwater Management in Temperate Region

Among various schemes to reuse and recycle the limited urban fresh water resources, sustainable urban stormwater management, such as water sensitive urban design and rainwater harvesting, has been recognized as one of the most efficient and economically viable approaches. Storm runoff shall be treated as close as possible to its source before it is reused or discharged into public drainage network or receiving waters to enhance the water environment quality. Bioretention swale/basin, which has been commonly applied to treat runoff from roads, car parks, cyclist and pedestrian paths, rooftops, etc., is recognized to be the most efficient and aesthetic pleasing way to harvest rainwater in urban settings, and other longish shape runoff catchment area. This paper studied over 10 bioretention swales/basins applications in temperate region worldwide covering China, Germany, Norway, Austria, USA, and Australia. Key steps in bioretention swale/basin design and implementation in temperate region were investigated, such as strategic bioretention scheme selection, flow conveyance and hydraulic capacity design, filtering media profile, vegetation scheme selection and maintenance scheme, and suggestion and key design parameters. The critical path and parameters of bioretention swale/basin design which enhanced the effectiveness and efficiency of its application for rainwater harvesting in temperate regions were derived.

Gross Pollutants Study in Urban Areas under Tropical Climates

Gross pollutants are the primary targeted pollutants in urban catchment management for urban water quality improvement as well as mitigation of flood. Apart from aesthetically unattractive because of its visibility, gross pollutants also contributes to degradation of river water quality and loss of aquatic habitat as it carries harmful pollutants such as oxygen demanding material, hydrocarbons and heavy metals. This study analyzed trend of gross pollutant generated from two urban residential areas located in Selangor, Malaysia. The median value of gross pollutant load obtained fi＇om the Amanah Apartment and Bandar Botanic are 347.41 kg/ha/year and 32.46 kg/ha/year, respectively. Relationship between gross pollutant wet load with rainfall depths was derived using regression equation. A significant trend of increasing gross pollutant wet load into drainage system with increasing rainfall depth was observed. The behavior of pollutant load is related to the one observed in Australia.

Operation and Maintenance Challenges in China“Sponge City”Program

China started a Sponge City program to offset the adverse impacts of urban developments and to tackle many water-related problems.By emphasizing stormwater management practices with“natural solutions”,many positive results have been achieved.The operation and maintenance(O&M)of Sponge City to support long-term success gained considerable focus.China is facing challenges many developed countries have encountered,as well as unique ones due to specific social,economic,and environmental conditions.This study identified and discussed Sponge City O&M challenges:(1)scheduling challenges,(2)technical challenges,(3)in short of local regulation/ordnance,(4)inadequate O&M assessment standard,(5)underprovided training,(6)PPP related concerns,(7)inter-agency coordination needs,(8)ownership and responsible party issues,(9)substandard documentation,and(10)funding and financial concerns.Selected cases and progress in pilot cities are introduced in the discussions.

Quantitative analysis of impact of green stormwater infrastructures on combined sewer overflow control and urban flooding control

Stimulated by the recent USEPA＇s green stormwater infrastructure （GSI） guidance and policies, GS1 systems have been widely implemented in the municipal area to control the combined sewer overflows （CSOs）, also known as low impact development （LID） approaches. To quantitatively evaluate the performance of GSI systems on CSO and urban flooding control, USEPA-Stormwater Management Model （SWMM） model was adopted in this study to simulate the behaviors of GSI systems in a well- developed urban drainage area, PSW45, under different circumstances. The impact of different percentages of stormwater runoff transported from impervious surfaces to the GSI systems on CSO and urban flooding control has also been investigated. Results show that with current buildup, GSI systems in PSW45 have the best performance for low intensity and short duration events on both volume and peak flow reductions, and have the worst pertbrmance tor high intensity and long durataon events. Since the low intensity and short duration events are dominant from a long-term perspective, utilizing GSI systems is considered as an effective measure of CSO control to meet the long-term controlstrategy for PSW45 watershed. However, GSI systems are not suitable for the flooding control purpose in PSW45 due to the high occurrence possibility of urban flooding during or after high intensity events where GSI systems have relatively poor performance no matter for a short or long duration event,

Determination of urban runoff coefficient using time series inverse modeling

Runoff coefficient is an important parameter for the decision support of urban stormwater management. However, factors like comprehensive land-use type, variable spatial elevation, dynamic rainfall and groundwater elevation, make the direct estimation of runoff coefficient difficult. This paper presented a novel method to estimate the urban runoff coefficient using the inverse method, where observed time-series catchment outfall flow volume was employed as input for the water balance model and runoff coefficients of different catchments were treated as unknown parameters. A developed constrained minimization objective function was combined to solve the model and minimized error between observed and modeled outfall flow is satisfactory for the presenting of a set of runoff coefficients. Estimated runoff coefficients for the urban catchments in Shanghai downtown area demonstrated that practice of low impact design could play an important role in reducing the urban runoff.