The Emergence Of Urban Hydrologic Outcomes From Inter-Related Social And Physical Dynamics
Abstract
One way that urbanized and undeveloped landscapes differ is in the degree to which human actions determine physical conditions. Urban hydrologic outcomes, in particular runoff generation, can be conceptualized as the result of years of land use and water conveyance decisions made in a unique climataological and geological context. A new urban water management paradigm increasingly emphasizes decentralized stormwater source controls as an alternative to historical centralized approaches that made use of large, engineered tanks, tunnels, and detention basins. Our ability to predict the effectiveness of such a strategy requires improved understanding of the complex interactions between social, institutional, and physical agents in cities. To yield meaningful physical outcomes, decentralized water management requires the cooperation of a unique and vast number of independent stakeholders, namely property owners, as well as government agencies with jurisdiction over land use, water allocation, development patterns, building codes, etc. Accomplishing such cooperation is non-trivial. Our interdisciplinary research team, consisting of engineers, architects, social scientists, hydrologists, and government representatives have been studying these dynamics in Point Breeze, a disadvantaged urban community in South Philadelphia. An agent based model, constructed using Repast Simphony, allows the owners of individual land parcels to make structural decisions that influence the partitioning of incident precipitation. Decision-rules are derived from a range of participatory methods (surveys, questionnaires, charettes, semi- and un-structured interviews, etc) conducted in the community over the course of one year. Two simple simulations are presented illustrating the dependence of particular hydrologic (i.e. runoff) outcomes on stakeholder choices.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFM.H32A..07M
- Keywords:
-
- 1803 HYDROLOGY / Anthropogenic effects;
- 1834 HYDROLOGY / Human impacts;
- 1847 HYDROLOGY / Modeling;
- 1879 HYDROLOGY / Watershed