Urban fl ood problems are being aggravated in growing cities. The process of urbanisation generally tends to supress natural retention areas, removing natural vegetation and producing large impervious areas. Besides, the traditional urban drainage approach, comprising mainly canalisation measures, showed to be potentially unsustainable, tending to transfer fl oods to downstream. Gradually, in the past recent years, this practice has been complemented or replaced by new concepts considering the use of distributed interventions to approximately recover fl ow patterns prior to the urbanisation. In Brazilian great cities, drainage systems' design started to incorporate the use of the so-called Compensatory Techniques, which aim to compensate the effects for the urbanisation process over the water cycle. In this context, detention and retention reservoirs have been conceived as potential adequate solutions. Departing from a Municipality proposition for a new urban development in Guerenguê River catchment, west zone of Rio de Janeiro, and considering the concept of compensatory techniques applied to the urban drainage, an alternative confi guration for the drainage system is proposed in the catchment scale, and compared with the critical present situation. In this alternative proposal, besides the Municipality actions, a complementary set of storage measures distributed along the riverine areas was considered. Additionally, local measures, composing multifunctional landscapes on the microdrainage scale, were also introduced to face local inundation problems. The scenarios assessment was supported by mathematical modelling. Modelling results showed that, at present situation, great part of the catchment suffers from fl ooding, with water depths that usually range from 0.15 m to 1.50 m. In critical areas, fl ooding may surpass the 1.50 m high level. The introduction of the compensatory techniques was capable of signifi cantly changing this situation. However, for a more effective result, land use planning must also be addressed in the context of fl ood control. Keywords: Compensatory techniques on urban drainage, fl ood control, mathematical modelling, MODCEL, storage measures.
INTRODUCTIONGrowing cities are increasingly suffering from urban fl oods as a consequence of the urbanisation process itself. The fast urban development experienced after the Industrial Revolution was responsible for several signifi cant changes in the urban water cycle, mainly due to the vegetation removal, the suppression of natural retention areas, and the high impervious rates. In the origin of this process, the traditional approach commonly adopted to face these problems comprised canalisation measures, mainly due to sanitation needs. This approach, however, showed to be unsustainable in terms of urban stormwater management, tending to transfer fl ood problems rather than solving them. In recent decades, the problem of urban fl ooding has been discussed from a new perspective. The recognition of this situation made the urban fl ood c...