Exploring Cost-effective Implementation of Real-time Control to Enhance Flooding Resilience against Future Rainfall and Land Cover Changes

Advances in sensing and controlling technology accelerate the application of real-time control (RTC) in stormwater management. RTC enables existing urban drainage systems (UDSs) to be retrofitted and autonomously controlled to adapt to increasing runoff volume and peak flow rates associated with extreme storm events. The goal of this research is to utilize RTC to promote resilient UDSs’ performance against the disturbances induced by climate and land cover changes. The present study investigates the performance and cost-effectiveness of RTC in enhancing flooding resilience. We developed an predictive RTC adaptation strategy at incremental control levels (0%, 33%, 67%, and 100%) using Python and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). A UDS located in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, served as the case study. Results showed that the implementation of smart stormwater RTC enhances flooding resilience by up to 37% under future combined changes in rainfall intensity and land cover imperviousness. The partially controlled (67% and 33% control levels) UDS outperforms the fully controlled system (100% control level) when factoring in costs. RTC is a cost-effective adaptation strategy: one million USD investment enhances the resilience by up to 3.2% in a 30-year life cycle. These findings support establishing adaptation approaches to create a new generation of resilient and smart stormwater systems adaptive to uncertain rainfall and land cover conditions.