Modelling the impact of design rainfall on the urban drainage system by Storm Water Management Model

Abstract

Flood modelling is an effective way to manage the stormwater network in cities. It aims to understand and predict the behaviour of stormwater network so that it can test and evaluate effective solutions to structural and operational problems. So simulation modelling stays a preoccupation for building a successful hydraulic modelling in urban areas. This study investigates the impact of the design rainfall on the hydraulic modelling results for the Azzaba stormwater network located in the North-East of Algeria by using the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). Four scenarios of design rainfall events were compared for 10, 25 and 50-year return periods, where we used double triangle and composite curves for the design rainfall event definition. The results show the impact of the choice of design rainfall on the behaviour of the stormwater network, from which the results of simulation by the double triangle method for the short durations represents a great risk on the probability that the stromwater network can overflow and flood the city, with a difference in peak discharge estimated at 62.97% and 58.94% for 2 h and 3 h events compared to the peak discharge simulated by the composite rainfall method.

Keywords

• composite rainfall
• double triangle rainfall
• flood
• hydraulic modelling
• Storm Water Management Model (SWMM)
• stormwater network