Water Science & Technology Vol 65 No 12 pp 2219–2227 © IWA Publishing 2012 doi:10.2166/wst.2012.134

Impact of sewer condition on urban flooding: an uncertainty analysis based on field observations and Monte Carlo simulations on full hydrodynamic models

M. van Bijnen, H. Korving and F. Clemens

In-sewer defects are directly responsible for affecting the performance of sewer systems. Notwithstanding the impact of the condition of the assets on serviceability, sewer performance is usually assessed assuming the absence of in-sewer defects. This leads to an overestimation of serviceability. This paper presents the results of a study in two research catchments on the impact of in-sewer defects on urban pluvial flooding at network level. Impacts are assessed using Monte Carlo simulations with a full hydrodynamic model of the sewer system. The studied defects include root intrusion, surface damage, attached and settled deposits, and sedimentation. These defects are based on field observations and translated to two model parameters (roughness and sedimentation). The calculation results demonstrate that the return period of flooding, number of flooded locations and flooded volumes are substantially affected by in-sewer defects. Irrespective of the type of sewer system, the impact of sedimentation is much larger than the impact of roughness. Further research will focus on comparing calculated and measured behaviour in one of the research catchments.

Keywords: flooding; flood frequency analysis; in-sewer defects; long-term rainfall series; Monte Carlo simulations; parallel computing

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