Accuracy of a Stormwater Monitoring Program for Urban Landuses

Abstract

This study examined the accuracy of an urban stormwater monitoring program in estimating the annual discharge load (L(T)) and the annual reduction rate by a stormwater treatment device (R(T)) for total suspended solids. A calibrated stormwater management model was used to generate the entire stormwater runoff events in one year and was used to estimate L(T) and R(T) under different monitoring strategies having limited numbers of runoff events, including random, wet season, antecedent dry days (ADD)-based, monthly, and seasonally weighted. For random monitoring, 12 storms were required to estimate the values of L(T) and R(T) with mean relative errors of 13.98 and 0.24%, respectively. Monthly monitoring had slightly greater mean relative errors compared to random monitoring. Wet season and ADD-based monitoring under- or overestimated both L(T) and R(T). Monitoring with equal numbers of storms from the wet and dry seasons best estimated L(T) and R(T).