Storm Water Management of Low Impact Development in Urban Areas Based on SWMM

Abstract

LID (low impact development) is the storm management technique designed for controlling runoff in urban areas, which can be used to solve urban flooding disasters. Taking Sucheng District of Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, China as an example, this project used SWMM (storm water management model) to study the effect of four different types of LID scenarios (① no LID technique, ② LID technique based on infiltration, ③ LID technique based on water storage, ④ LID technique based on the combination of infiltration and water storage) on urban flooding under different rainfall patterns. For the whole study area, the results show that infiltration facilities have the greater reduction rate of surface runoff compared with storage facilities. The combined model (infiltration + storage) works best in the reduction of peak flow and flood volume, with the maximum reduction rate of peak flow (32.5%), and the maximum reduction rate of flood volume (31.8%). For local nodes, infiltration facilities and water storage facilities have different effects. Infiltration facilities significantly reduce runoff of node 47, the reduction rate of ponding time ranges from 73.1% to 54.5%, while water storage facilities have no effects on it. Storage facilities significantly reduce runoff of node 52, the reduction rate of ponding time is 100%, while infiltration facilities have no effects on it. Under all the LID designs, runoff reduction gradually increases with the increasing rainfall amount, and peak reduction becomes stable when rainfall amount reaches about 81.8 mm. In general, the combined model (infiltration + storage) performs better than any other scenarios in runoff reduction. The research shows that LID facilities can greatly mitigate flood, thus the urban flooding disasters caused by extreme rainstorms can be prevented.