Infrastructure benchmarking for semi-real urban stormwater networks

Abstract

[EN] Attaining accurate information on the underground urban drainage/storm networks is a very difficult task, specifically in (developing) countries undergoing urban expansion. The problem of limited data availability gets even worse when considering that most case studies cannot made public due to security reasons. This, therefore, shed light on the lack of possessing enough case studies with different topological characteristics/attributes for the urban drainage research community to regularly explore and exploit their strategies/methodologies in a unified and integrated manner, allowing scholars to analyse and even compare their implications. To cover this research gap, we developed a ready-to-use open-access database of a multitude of (semi) real urban stormwater case studies with different characteristics. Specifically, optimized centralized and decentralized stormwater networks are considered for creating the benchmarks while redundant flow pathways are introduced into these structures (by leveraging complex network analysis) to create more diverse characteristics. This allows that if for a real case study area, no further information is available (e.g., developing countries), with the proposed approach, a feasible model for principal evaluations can be created with very low efforts. We expect more scholars join this momentum in the future by adding more case studies with various attributes to form a comprehensive and rich database not only in terms of hydrodynamic models and case studies but also digital sensors and observation data (e.g., flow meter, rain gauge data, etc.).