Risk analysis of sustainable urban drainage and irrigation

Abstract

Urbanization, by creating extended impervious areas, to the detriment of vegetated ones, may have an undesirable influence on the water and energy balances of urban environments. The storage and infiltration capacity of the drainage system lessens the negative influence of urbanization, and vegetated areas help to re-establish pre-development environmental conditions. Resource limitation, climate, leading to increasing water scarcity, demographic and socio-institutional shifts promote more integrated water management. Storm-water harvesting for landscape irrigation mitigates possible water restrictions for the urban population in drought scenarios. A new probabilistic model for sustainable rainfall drainage, storage and re-use systems was implemented in this study. Risk analysis of multipurpose storage capacities was generalized by the use of only a few dimensionless parameters and applied to a case study in a Mediterranean-type climate, although the applicability of the model is not restricted to any particular climatic type.