Modeling the impact of future rainfall changes on the effectiveness of urban stormwater control measures

Abstract

The convergence of urban expansion, deteriorating infrastructure, and a changing climate will escalate the risks of stormwater pollution and urban flooding in the coming decades. Using outputs from an ensemble of global climate models to drive a high spatial resolution stormwater model, we analyzed climate change impacts on urban stormwater runoff and control measures for 23 cities across the United States. Runoff model outputs for two future emissions scenarios ending in 2055 were compared against a historical scenario to assess changes. All cities showed increases in average annual stormwater runoff, with changes up to 30% over the next 30 years due to a greater frequency of high intensity storm events. Runoff model outputs showed substantial variation across cities with untreated stormwater runoff increasing by as much as 48%. Patterns of future runoff impacts within cities will affect the performance of distributed treatment strategies such as Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) to meet municipal water quality improvement and runoff reduction goals. Results indicate that adoption of adaptable design standards and decision support tools that readily accommodate projected precipitation changes are critical for supporting more resilient designs of stormwater control measures.

Can blue–green infrastructure counteract the effects of climate change on combined sewer overflows? Study of a swiss catchment

“…The projected increase in extreme rainfall due to climate change [1] poses a risk to urban drainage systems [2,3] and in particular, to combined sewer systems (CSS), which convey sewage and stormwater in the same pipes [4]. Increases in extreme rainfall lead to more stormwater entering CSS pipes and thus increase the likelihood of combined sewer overflow (CSO) discharges [5], a leading cause of urban water pollution [6].…”