Current European approaches in highway runoff management: A review

Abstract

Highway runoff is one of the most significant non-point sources of pollution for the terrestrial and aquatic environment with biological, physical, and chemical effects. Considering local characteristics, treatment practices, and determining factors are essential for highway runoff management. The aim of this paper is to survey the review of highway runoff management in Europe with emphasis on runoff characterization, treatment, and modeling approaches and identifying possible knowledge gaps exists based on our review. The results showed that highway runoff has spatiotemporal variation, which is the main factor in the regional selection of the best management practice (BMP). Also, recent studies have poorly deemed characterization of highway runoff in different climatic scenarios, performance assessment of the current BMPs, and uncertainty analysis in modeling approaches. Furthermore, economic and risk analysis, along with decision-making methods, provide an optimum plan for the design and operation of BMPs.

Keywords

• Road runoff
• Runoff characterization
• Best management practices (BMPs)
• Road runoff modeling