Urban waterlogging control: A novel method to urban drainage pipes reconstruction, systematic and automated

Quantitative simulation of urban waterlogging using computer models is an effective technical means for urban storm water management, especially for predicting and preventing waterlogging. In this study, a city in the northern Anhui Plain, China, was selected as the study site. The Storm Water Management Model was applied to simulate the dynamic changes in the pipeline overload, node overflow, and discharge port runoff characteristics from three perspectives: surface runoff, pipe network transmission, and flow control of low-impact development. The operation of the rainwater pipe network under different return periods and the real-time operation of the rainwater pipe network were simulated to seek solutions to urban waterlogging problems caused by flat terrain and slow drainage. The results revealed that surface runoff is the primary source of rainfall in the study area, with a runoff coefficient of 0.599. The drainage pipe network was optimized by expanding the diameter of the pipe from ≤1.5 mm to ≥2 mm. The water reduction rate was more than 50%, and overload did not occur after optimization. Therefore, sinking green space technology and optimization methods for expanding a pipe diameter can reduce urban waterlogging.

The rapid expansion of urban drainage pipe networks, driven by economic development, poses significant challenges for efficient monitoring and management. The complexity and scale of these networks make it difficult to effectively monitor and manage the discharge of urban domestic sewage, rainwater, and industrial effluents, leading to illegal discharges, leakage, environmental pollution, and economic losses. Efficient management relies on a rational layout of drainage pipe network monitoring points. However, existing research on optimal monitoring point layout is limited, primarily relying on manual analysis and fuzzy clustering methods, which are prone to human bias and ineffective monitoring data. To address these limitations, this study proposes a coupled model approach for the automatic optimization of monitoring point placement in drainage pipe networks. The proposed model integrates the information entropy index, Bayesian reasoning, the Monte Carlo method, and the stormwater management model (SWMM) to optimize monitoring point placement objectively and measurably. The information entropy algorithm is utilized to quantify the uncertainty and complexity of the drainage pipe network, facilitating the identification of optimal monitoring point locations. Bayesian reasoning is employed to update probabilities based on observed data, while the Monte Carlo method generates probabilistic distributions for uncertain parameters. The SWMM is utilized to simulate stormwater runoff and pollutant transport within the drainage pipe network. Results indicate that (1) the relative mean error of the parameter inversion simulation results of the pollution source tracking model is linearly fitted with the information entropy. The calculation shows that there is a good positive linear correlation between them, which verifies the feasibility of the information entropy algorithm in the field of monitoring node optimization; (2) the information entropy algorithm can be well applied to the optimal layout of a single monitoring node and multiple monitoring nodes, and it can correspond well to the inversion results of the tracking model parameters; (3) the constructed monitoring point optimization model can well realize the optimal layout of monitoring points of a drainage pipe network. Finally, the pollution source tracking model is used to verify the effectiveness of the optimal layout of monitoring points, and the whole process has less human participation and a high degree of automation. The automated monitoring point optimization layout model proposed in this study has been successfully applied in practical cases, significantly improving the efficiency of urban drainage network monitoring and reducing the degree of manual participation, which has important practical significance for improving the level of urban water environment management.

Research on intelligent control theory and strategy of gas drainage pipe network based on graph theory

Field trials to detect drainage pipe networks using thermal and RGB data from unmanned aircraft

The core of comprehensive treatment effect of water environment in river basin lies in pipe network system. The blockage of urban drainage pipe network is one of the main reasons affecting the healthy operation of urban drainage network system. So the intelligent analysis method of urban drainage pipe network blockage diagnosis can quickly find the problems of urban drainage pipe network and improve the operation and maintenance efficiency of urban drainage pipe network. In this paper, through the analysis of rainfall data, rainfall and sewage pipe network flow variation regular pattern, the change range, the essay obtains the rain and sewage pipe network blockage diagnosis threshold. Combined with the urban intelligent drainage pipe network system, through the customized setting of pipe network blockage threshold, the rapid diagnosis and early warning of the blockage problem of the drainage pipe network are realized, and the healthy operation of the urban drainage network is guaranteed.

Urban rainstorm and waterlogging occurred more frequently in recent years, causing huge economic losses and serious social harms. Accurate rainstorm and waterlogging simulation is of significant value for disaster prevention and mitigation. This paper proposed a numerical model for urban rainstorm and waterlogging based on the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) and Geographic Information System (GIS), and the model was applied in Lianhu district of Xi'an city of China. Furthermore, the effects of rainfall characteristics, pipe network implementation level and urbanization level on waterlogging were explored from the perspectives of spatial distribution of waterlogging points, drainage capacity of pipe network and surface runoff generation and confluence. The results show that: (1) with the increase of rainfall recurrence period, the peak of total water accumulating volume, the average decline rate of water accumulating volume and the number of waterlogging nodes increase; (2) optimizing the pipe diameter can shorten the average overload time of the pipe network from the entire pipe network, but for a single pipe, optimizing the pipe diameter may lead to overloading of unoptimized downstream pipeline; (3) the lower the imperviousness, the less the number of waterlogging nodes and average time of water accumulating, and (4) the west, northwest and southwest areas are relatively affected by the imperviousness, only improving the underlying surface conditions has limited influence on waterlogging in the study area. This study can provide reference for urban waterlogging prevention and reduction and pipe network reconstruction.

Urban drainage pipe network is the backbone of urban drainage, flood control and water pollution prevention, and is also an essential symbol to measure the level of urban modernization. A large number of underground drainage pipe networks in aged urban areas have been laid for a long time and have reached or practically reached the service age. The repair of drainage pipe networks has attracted extensive attention from all walks of life. Since the Ministry of ecological environment and the national development and Reform Commission jointly issued the action plan for the Yangtze River Protection and restoration in 2019, various provinces in the Yangtze River Basin, such as Anhui, Jiangxi and Hunan, have extensively carried out PPP projects for urban pipeline restoration, in order to improve the quality and efficiency of sewage treatment. Based on the management practice of urban pipe network restoration project in Wuhu City, Anhui Province, this paper analyzes the problems of lengthy construction period and repeated operation caused by the mismatch between the design schedule of the restoration scheme and the construction schedule of the pipe network restoration in the existing project management mode, and proposes a model of urban drainage pipe network restoration scheme selection based on the improved support vector machine. The validity and feasibility of the model are analyzed and verified by collecting the data in the project practice. The research results show that the model has a favorable effect on the selection of urban drainage pipeline restoration schemes, and its accuracy can reach 90%. The research results can provide method guidance and technical support for the rapid decision-making of urban drainage pipeline restoration projects.

In a highly urbanized area, land availability is limited for the installation of space consuming stormwater systems for best management practices (BMPs), leading to the consideration of underground stormwater treatment devices connected to the stormwater pipe system. The configuration of a stormwater pipe network determines the hydrological and pollutant transport characteristics of the stormwater discharged through the pipe network, and thus should be an important design consideration for effective management of stormwater quantity and quality. This article presents a multi-objective optimization approach for designing a stormwater pipe network with on-line stormwater treatment devices to achieve an optimal trade-off between the total installation cost and the annual removal efficiency of total suspended solids (TSS). The Non-dominated Sorted Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) was adapted to solve the multi-objective optimization problem. The study site used to demonstrate the developed approach was a commercial area that has an existing pipe network with eight outfalls into an adjacent stream in Yongin City, South Korea. The stormwater management model (SWMM) was calibrated based on the data obtained from a subcatchment within the study area and was further used to simulate the flow rates and TSS discharge rates through a given pipe network for the entire study area. In the simulation, an underground stormwater treatment device was assumed to be installed at each outfall and sized proportional to the average flow rate at the outfall. The total installation cost for the pipes and underground devices was estimated based on empirical formulas using the flow rates and TSS discharge rates simulated by the SWMM. In the demonstration example, the installation cost could be reduced by up to 9% while the annual TSS removal efficiency could be increased by 4% compared to the original pipe network configuration. The annual TSS removal efficiency was relatively insensitive to the total installation cost in the Pareto-optimal solutions of the pipe network design. The results suggested that the installation cost of the pipes and stormwater treatment devices can be substantially reduced without significantly compromising the pollutant removal efficiency when the pipe network is optimally designed.

Kim, S.E.; Lee, S.; Kim, D., and Song, C.G., 2018. Stormwater Inundation Analysis in Small and Mediun Cities for the Climate Change Using EPA-SWMM and HDM-2D. In: Shim, J.-S.; Chun, I., and Lim, H.S. (eds.), Proceedings from the International Coastal Symposium (ICS) 2018 (Busan, Republic of Korea). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 85, pp. 991–995. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.The increase of rainfall intensity and flash-flood due to climate change are expected to exacerbate flood inundation in urban area. Especially, small and medium cities lacking drainage facilities are more vulnerable to flood inundation than large cities. This study introduces a simplified urban stormwater inundation simulation modelling for the two small and medium-sized cities located in South Korea using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) and a HydroDynamic Model-2D(HDM-2D). EPA-SWMM model which are widely used to the runoff analysis of urban areas containing drainage pipe network, was used to calculate runoff flow and surcharged overflow of the existing urban drainage network. Then, a 2-D inundation model, HDM-2D was coupled with 1-D EPA-SWMM model to simulate the flood propagation in urban areas. The 1-D/2-D coupled model was calibrated with the real rainfall events and applied to analyze the effect of climate change on urban stormwater inundation for the 30-year frequency of design rainfall calculated by RCP 4.5 of the IPCC RCPs. In a simplified inundation analysis based on 1-D/2-D coupled simulation, the small-scale urban flooding in the small and medium cities was rapidly propagated within two hours after the occurrence of a surcharge overflow. The flooding wave propagation was highly related to the flow interaction with topographical obstacles as road, and bottom elevation or slope.

Numerical simulation study on the effect of underground drainage pipe network in typical urban flood

A comprehensive hydrological model, like the storm water management model (SWMM), has been widely used for rainfall-runoff simulation. In recent years, simple and effective modern modeling techniques have also brought great attention to the prediction of runoff with rainfall input. A comparative case study between SWMM and a presently developed fuzzy logic model for the predictions of total runoff within the watershed of Cascina Scala, Pavia in Italy is presented. A data set of 23 events from 2000 to 2003 including with the total rainfall and total runoff are adopted to train fuzzy logic parameters. Other data (1990–1995) with detailed time variations of rainfall and runoff are available for the setup and calibration of SWMM for runoff modeling. Among the 1990–1995 data, 35 independent rainfall events are selected to test the prediction performance of the SWMM and fuzzy logic models by comparing the predicted total runoffs with measured data. Comparisons and performance analyses in terms of the root-mean-squared error and coefficient of efficiency are made between the SWMM and the fuzzy logic model. The predicted total runoffs from either the SWMM or the fuzzy logic model are found to agree reasonably well with the measured data. For large rainfall events, the fuzzy logic model generally outperforms the SWMM unless the modification of the impervious ratio is applied to improve the SWMM results. However, the SWMM can produce the time varying hydrograph whereas fuzzy logic is subject to limitation of the methodology and is unable to generate such an output.

With the rapid development of urbanization, impervious areas spread quickly, which have greatly influenced regional hydrology and water resources. The water quality is getting worse and worse. The flood and drought disasters have aggravated. Human living environment has changed and consequently sustainable development of economy is restricted. The drainage pipe network plays a very important role in urban drainage and flood control. In the study, using of computer technology, the drainage capacity of study area in different design rainstorm return periods (P = 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10 a, respectively) is analyzed and simulated by Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). Part of the pipe network that are filled slowly and change great are found out fewer than 6 design rainstorms, which provide the basis for reconstruction of urban conduits. The simulation results can provide strong technical support for the city drainage system planning and management.

Based on the one-dimensional channel conservancy model, this paper considers the factor of urban pipe network drainage, and couples the pipe network model with the one-dimensional channel conservancy model to fully analyse the interaction between the channel water level and the drainage pipe network displacement. Taking a coastal city as an example, the model simulation results show that when the water level of the river is high, it will cause the drainage of the pipe network; the lower part of the terrain will become waterlogged because of the aging of the urban pipe and rainstorm. It is impossible to effectively solve the problem of flood control and drainage by widening the river channel. It is necessary to adopt the coordinated improvement of the pipe network and the river channel to achieve effective targets.

With the increasing urbanization rate, higher demand is placed on drainage systems, necessitating analysis of their risk profiles. While many studies focus on the individual hydraulic modeling of stormwater and wastewater systems when considering operational risks, they often overlook the exacerbating effects of combined stormwater and wastewater flows on each other’s risks. In this study, we constructed a model of the combined stormwater and wastewater drainage system in Lijiao, Guangdong Province. We analyzed the operational risks of both stormwater and sewage networks in different scenarios, focusing on full-load pipes, overload pipes, node overflows, and minimum flow velocities. Furthermore, we compared the exacerbating effects of sewage and stormwater on each other’s network operational risks. Simulation results indicated that, for sewage networks with combined sewer sections, the lengths of full-load pipes and overload pipes increased by an average of 27.4% and 16.3%, respectively, during rainy weather scenarios compared to dry weather. After considering the inflow of sewage into combined sewer sections, the average length of full-load pipes increased by 3.8 km, overload pipe length increased by 1.1 km, and overflow volume increased by 2.26 × 104 m3. As the return period of rainfall events increases, these inter-system impacts gradually diminish. Therefore, when modeling drainage systems and assessing operational risks, particularly during low return period rainfall events, the inclusion of both stormwater and sewage in combined sewer networks should be comprehensively considered.

In drainage engineering design, particularly, in analysis, check and hydraulic calculation of drainage pipe network, recognition and acquisition of drainage pipe network is the first and foremost task (Li et al., 2007).To implement the auto-generation of drainage pipe network drawing, this paper applies the graph theory to model the composition and data structure of a drainage pipe network. An effective method is proposed to automatically generate the directed drainage pipe network given a sink. The Breadth-first Search algorithm, Incidence-edge calculation algorithm and Transpose-graph algorithm from Boost Graph Library (BGL) are applied to implement the algorithm for the proposed method. The method provides greater automation and more efficiency but requires less inputs in the process of obtaining the practical drainage pipe network than other commonly used software do. It also lays a foundation for drainage pipe network analysis and related to hydraulic calculations. The accuracy and efficiency of the method is verified by the engineering practices described in this paper.