posted on 2017-09-01, 15:00authored byJoão A. Zeferino, Maria C. Cunha, Nuno E. Simões, Juan G. Saldarriaga
Flooding in urban areas may result in costly damage, and affect population safety and the proper functioning of cities. Controlling and managing urban stormwater involves adapting the urban drainage network to reduce peak runoff and prevent flooding impacts. This work presents an optimization model to find the best solution for implementing rainwater storage units (SUs). The optimization model was used to determine the optimal location and size of the SUs and their outflow orifice sizes, in order to minimize SU construction, maintenance and flood damage costs. Flood damage costs were assessed based on the depth of urban floodwater and the type of buildings. EPA-SWMM was used to simulate the hydrologic and hydraulic behavior of the drainage system and a simulated annealing algorithm was implemented to solve the optimization model. The developed methodology was tested on a case study inspired by a real urban area located in Bogotá, Colombia