Highly Resolved Rainfall-Runoff Simulation of Retrofitted Green Stormwater Infrastructure at the Micro-Watershed Scale

Sami Towsif Khan, Fernando Chapa and Jochen Hack
Additional contact information
Sami Towsif Khan: SEE-URBAN-WATER Research Group, Section of Ecological Engineering, Institute of Applied Geosciences, Technical University of Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstraße 9, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany
Fernando Chapa: SEE-URBAN-WATER Research Group, Section of Ecological Engineering, Institute of Applied Geosciences, Technical University of Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstraße 9, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany
Jochen Hack: SEE-URBAN-WATER Research Group, Section of Ecological Engineering, Institute of Applied Geosciences, Technical University of Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstraße 9, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany

Land, 2020, vol. 9, issue 9, 1-18

Abstract: Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI), a sustainable engineering design approach for managing urban stormwater runoff, has long been recommended as an alternative to conventional conveyance-based stormwater management strategies to mitigate the adverse impact of sprawling urbanization. Hydrological and hydraulic simulations of small-scale GSI measures in densely urbanized micro watersheds require high-resolution spatial databases of urban land use, stormwater structures, and topography. This study presents a highly resolved Storm Water Management Model developed under considerable spatial data constraints. It evaluates the cumulative effect of the implementation of dispersed, retrofitted, small-scale GSI measures in a heavily urbanized micro watershed of Costa Rica. Our methodology includes a high-resolution digital elevation model based on Google Earth information, the accuracy of which was sufficient to determine flow patterns and slopes, as well as to approximate the underground stormwater structures. The model produced satisfactory results in event-based calibration and validation, which ensured the reliability of the data collection procedure. Simulating the implementation of GSI shows that dispersed, retrofitted, small-scale measures could significantly reduce impermeable surface runoff (peak runoff reduction up to 40%) during frequent, less intense storm events and delay peak surface runoff by 5–10 min. The presented approach can benefit stormwater practitioners and modelers conducting small scale hydrological simulation under spatial data constraint.

Keywords: green infrastructure; urban flooding; SWMM; stormwater; neighborhood level; high resolution; Costa Rica (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/9/339/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/9/339/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:9:p:339-:d:417541

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().