Urban Stormwater Modeling with Local Inertial Approximation Form of Shallow Water Equations: A Comparative Study

This study focused on the performance and limitations of the local inertial approximation form model(LIM)of the shallow water equations(SWEs)when applied in urban flood modeling.A numerical scheme of the LIM equations was created using finite volume method with a first-order spatiotemporal Roe Riemann solver.A simplified urban stormwater model(SUSM)considering surface and underground dual drainage system was constructed based on LIM and the US Environmental Protection Agency Storm Water Management Model.Moreover,a complete urban stormwater model(USM)based on the SWEs with the same solution algorithm was used as the evaluation benchmark.Numerical results of the SUSM and USM in a highly urbanized area under four rainfall return periods were analyzed and compared.The results reveal that the performance of the SUSM is highly consistent with that of the USM but with an improvement in computational efficiency of approximately 140%.In terms of the accuracy of the model,the SUSM slightly underestimates the water depth and velocity and is less accurate when dealing with supercritical flow in urban stormwater flood modeling.Overall,the SUSM can produce comparable results to USM with higher computational efficiency,which provides a simplified and alternative method for urban flood modeling.

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.

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,