Environmental and economic assessment of a pilot stormwater infiltration system for flood prevention in Brazil

Abstract

Abstract:Green and grey stormwater management infrastructures, such as the filter, swale and infiltration trench (FST), can be used to prevent flooding events. The aim of this paper was to determine the environmental and economic impacts of a pilot FST that was built in São Carlos (Brazil) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). As a result, the components with the greatest contributions to the total impacts of the FST were the infiltration trench and the grass cover. The system has a carbon footprint of 0.13 kg CO 2 eq./m 3 of infiltrated stormwater and an eco-efficiency ratio of 0.35 kg CO 2 eq./USD. Moreover, the FST prevented up to 95% of the runoff in the area.Compared to a grey infrastructure, this system is a good solution with respect to PVC stormwater pipes, which require a long pipe length (1070 m) and have a shorter lifespan. In contrast, concrete pipes are a better solution, and their impacts are similar to those of the FST. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the changes in the impacts with the varying lifespan of the system components. Thus, the proper management of the FST can reduce the economic and environmental impacts of the system by increasing its durability.

Mitigation Life Cycle Assessment: Best Practices from LCA of Energy and Water Infrastructure That Incurs Impacts to Mitigate Harm

“…Articles were sought based on literature searches for LCA + wastewater, stormwater, CCS, and FGD, in addition to ad hoc inclusion of papers based on the authors' experience. Groups of recent papers from the stormwater literature by Anna Petit-Boix and collaborators [35][36][37][38][39][40] and by Sarah Brudler and collaborators [30,41,42] were particularly closely examined due to their relevance and display of deepening nuance about what we call mitigation LCA over time.…”

A Review of Recent Studies on Urban Stormwater Drainage System for Urban Flood Management

“…Guo & Zhuge (2008) indicates estimation of Runoff volume frequency distribution and peak discharge rate as one of the task in urban stormwater management. Petit-Boix et al (2015) states that stormwater management plays major role in preventing flood. As stated by PNRCDC (2014), urban Stormwater management helps to manage the problems arise from imperviousness of urban areas such as decreasing in ground water recharge, high frequency of flooding, instability of stream channels and damage to infrastructures.…”

Floods and consequential life cycle assessment: Integrating flood damage into the environmental assessment of stormwater Best Management Practices

“…To reduce the number of floods and their consequences, a pilot green stormwater BMP was built in 2009 on the campus of the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar). In this case, the BMP was an FST that occupied 600 m 2 and had a maximum storage capacity of 110 m 3 , considering the saturation of the subsurface soil layer (for additional information, see Lucas (2011), Lucas et al (2013) and Petit-Boix et al (2015)). The technical requirements of the infiltration trenches are described in Baptista et al (2005).…”

“…In this case, the operation phase accounted for the carbon sequestration potential. Maintenance was excluded because it was considered negligible according to the managers and was linked to the end of service life of the FST based on a previous study (Petit-Boix et al, 2015). We assumed that the system had an average lifespan of 10 years due to maintenance factors (USDT, 2014), although this value might vary depending on the management practices, runoff quality and precipitation intensity.…”