Assessing Current and Future Utility of Predictive Active Stormwater Controls for Reducing Flooding in Coastal Cities
Abstract
Low-lying, low-relief coastal cities have seen increased flooding due to climate change and accompanying sea level rise. This problem is expected to worsen. Actively controlling man-made stormwater systems is a potential solution for addressing coastal flooding. Active stormwater control may consist of automated pumps or valves that control water levels and flows in a stormwater system. We present research on the utility of implementing active stormwater controls in an urban setting. Three control scenarios are compared: no control, rules-based control, and model predictive control. The stormwater system and the control scenarios are simulated using the United States Environmental Protection Agency Storm Water Management Model (SWMM5) coupled with a Python library, swmm_mpc, which enables the simulation of predictive control. Since SWMM5 is used as the process model, an evolutionary algorithm is used to find an effective control strategy in the predictive control scenario. High performance computing resources are used to perform the computationally intensive evolutionary algorithm. A simplified model patterned after a coastal city is used to demonstrate the utility of the active controls. The model contains two detention ponds with actively-controlled outlets. In the use case, the control of the outlet of the ponds influenced the flooding of a downstream location. The rules-based approach reduced the amount of flooding by 45% and the model predictive control approach eliminated flooding altogether. Although, the model predictive control approach was most effective at finding a control strategy that reduced flooding it was computationally expensive, taking 36 minutes to run a 16-hour simulation using 16 cores on a high performance computer. In addition to assessing the utility of active stormwater control in a scenario based on current sea-level conditions, we explore how that utility will increase as sea level rises.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H43J2608S
- Keywords:
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- 1821 Floods;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1834 Human impacts;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1840 Hydrometeorology;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY