Distributed Stormwater Controls for Flood Mitigation within Urbanized Watersheds: Case Study of Rocky Branch Watershed in Columbia, South Carolina

Low impact development technologies (LIDs) have been reported as alternatives to mitigate urban water-related hazards, particularly for urban flooding. However, the effectiveness of LIDs on flood mitigation is still not well understood. This study assessed the mitigation extent of urban flooding by LIDs for retrofitting an urbanized area at a feasible level using a hydrological model. A range of storms with different rainfall durations and amounts from intensity-duration-frequency curves were used to evaluate the hydrological performances of LIDs. The results indicated that LIDs were effective alternatives to mitigate urban flooding in the urbanized area. Surface runoff and peak flow decreased by 18.6-59.2% and 8-71.4%, respectively. However, the flood mitigation performance decreased markedly with the increase of rainfall amount. Although LIDs were less effective in flood mitigation during shorter and heavier storms, the performance was better with the increase of rainfall duration. This research provides an insight into flood reduction capabilities of LIDs under different rainfall characteristics for retrofitting built up areas, which is useful for urban storm management.

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“…Surface runoff was reduced by 15%, 27% and 38% for 2, 5 and 10-year storms with the application of rain gardens in Columbia (Morsy et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Flood mitigation performance of low impact development technologies under different storms for retrofitting an urbanized area

Zhang

Liu

et al. 2019

Journal of Cleaner Production

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“…To demonstrate the metadata design, we used the application of a SWMM model used to study flooding in an urban watershed (Morsy et al, 2016) as a use case. We wish to publish the resulting model instances online.…”

Section: Experimental Use Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The objective of this prior modeling study was to better understand the potential of rain gardens as distributed stormwater controls for flood mitigation within an urbanized watershed (Morsy et al, 2016). The specific study area of the research was the Rocky Branch watershed, which is located in downtown Columbia, South Carolina, USA.…”

Section: Experimental Use Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a metadata framework for environmental models with an example hydrologic application in HydroShare

Morsy

Goodall

Castronova

et al. 2017

Environmental Modelling & Software

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Environmental modelers rely on a variety of computational models to make predictions, test hypotheses, and address specific problems related to environmental science and natural resource management. Scientists and engineers must devote significant effort preparing these computational models. While significant attention has been devoted to sharing and reusing environmental data, less attention has been devoted to sharing and reusing environmental models. A first step toward increasing environmental model sharing and reuse is to define a general metadata framework for models that is flexible and, therefore, applicable across the wide variety of models used by environmental modelers. This paper proposes a general approach for representing environmental model metadata that extends the Dublin Core metadata framework. The framework is implemented within the HydroShare system and applied for a hydrologic model sharing use case. This example application demonstrates how the metadata framework implemented within HydroShare can assist in model sharing, publication, reuse, and reproducibility.

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“…Chapter 2 used to study flooding in an urban watershed (Morsy et al, 2016) as a use case. We wish to publish the resulting model instances online.…”

Section: Experimental Use Casementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a reminder, the objective of this prior modeling study was to better understand the potential of rain gardens as distributed stormwater controls for flood mitigation within an urbanized watershed (Morsy et al, 2016). The specific study area of the research was the Rocky The metadata framework was implemented within HydroShare and used to share the model program and model instance resources for the example application.…”

Section: Experimental Use Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Cyberinfrastructure to Support Flood Modeling from Catchment to Regional Scales

Morsy

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Flooding events are projected to increase in frequency and intensity in coming years due to climate change. New tools and approaches are needed to assist decision makers in better understanding and addressing societal impacts due to flooding and how to mitigate these impacts.This research addressed three challenges related to flooding impacts: (i) better understanding how distributed stormwater infrastructure can mitigate flooding in urban catchments, (ii) designing and building spatially-detailed, real-time flood warning systems for emergency management purposes, and (iii) designing and building cyberinfrastructure to support reuse and transparency in both flood modeling and hydrologic modeling more broadly. The goal of this research was to address these challenges by conducting three studies. The second study explored building an automated cloud-based system for forecasting flooded roadway and bridge locations at a regional-scale. Because the study area has very low topographic relief, a two-dimensional (2D), computationally-expensive hydrodynamic model is required. This study demonstrated the ability of using instances in a public cloud with powerful graphical processing units (GPUs) to run a large (average of 4 million nodes) 2D hydrodynamic model in a time frame relevant to real-time emergency management applications. The steps required to build this system were (i) creating an automated workflow for obtaining and processing ii forecast rainfall data, (ii) running the 2D model in the cloud, (iii) using geospatial analysis tools to identify flooded bridges, and (iv) presenting the results online for decision makers. The system automates forecast data access and pre-processing, execution of a high-resolution 2D hydrodynamic model, and map-based visualization of model outputs using Amazon Web Services (AWS).The third study advanced approaches for sharing hydrologic models, such as the models created in this dissertation, through community supported cyberinfrastructure. Sharing models is important for scientific reproducibility, reuse, and fidelity. In this study, the first task was to design a metadata framework for hydrologic models that is flexible and applicable across the wide variety of models used by hydrologists. Then the study demonstrated the utility of this framework for sharing, publishing, and reusing models through an implementation within the HydroShare cyberinfrastructure system.In the first study, the results suggest that rain gardens with 30 cm berm heights and a total area equal to 20% of the impervious surfaces within the watershed should provide sufficient storage to mitigate flooding for rain events up to and including a 10 year return period storm event.The results also suggest approximately 15%, 27%, and 38% of the runoff generated from impervious surfaces should be diverted to the rain gardens to mitigate flooding from 2, 5, and 10 year return period storm events, respectively. Given prior work on the adoption of LID approaches for other watersheds, rain gardens could effectivel...

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Distributed Stormwater Controls for Flood Mitigation within Urbanized Watersheds: Case Study of Rocky Branch Watershed in Columbia, South Carolina

Cited by 35 publications

References 19 publications

Flood mitigation performance of low impact development technologies under different storms for retrofitting an urbanized area

Flood mitigation performance of low impact development technologies under different storms for retrofitting an urbanized area

Design of a metadata framework for environmental models with an example hydrologic application in HydroShare

Cyberinfrastructure to Support Flood Modeling from Catchment to Regional Scales

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