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Development of a decision-support framework for placement of BMPs in urban watersheds

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Abstract

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has initiated a research project to develop an evaluation framework for the optimal placement of best management practices (BMPs) options at strategic locations in mixed land use urban watersheds. The integrated watershed-based stormwater management decision-support framework (ISMDSF) is to be based on a geographical information system (GIS) watershed/BMP database, cost, and hydrologic, hydraulic, and water quality modeling to achieve desired water quality objectives. The initial phase of this research is expected to be completed in early 2005. While this work is ongoing and many tasks have yet to start, this paper presents the project background, rationale, approach, initial review findings of watershed and BMPs models, and the preliminary design recommendations of the framework.

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... As an added benefit, DELTANOE also provides guidance on design, construction, and maintenance on each proposed solution. In early 2003, the U.S. EPA also initiated a project to develop a framework for the selection of BMPs for successful stormwater management (Lai et al., 2003). The integrated stormwater decisionsupport framework (ISMDSF) is slated to use public domain models for hydraulic, hydrologic, and water quality routing in spatial and temporal scales. ...
... Both structural and nonstructural BMPs are expected to be included. The estimated completion of the initial phase, development of the overall framework and the watershed component, is in early 2005 (Lai et al., 2003). ...
... BMP placement refers to the spatial scale covered by a single BMP or set of BMPs used to protect the watershed as a whole. Three spatial scales of BMP placement have been identified; onsite, sub-regional, and regional (Lai et al., 2003). The onsite spatial scale is defined as 10 to 100 acres, a size typical of a single commercial/industrial building lot or residential neighborhood. ...
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The use of BMPs to control and treat urban stormwater runoff has become a common practice in urban watershed management. This has been propagated by ordinances developed by local governments that dictate the use of structural and nonstructural BMPs for new and existing development and to protect surface water quality and mitigate the impacts of stormwater runoff on receiving waters. BMPs demonstrate a wide range of pollutant removal capabilities and their performance is affected by several factors, including the long-term variation in rainfall, BMP design characteristics, processes affecting chemical phase and speciation, and environmental conditions. The pollutant removal performance of BMPs is difficult to interpret beyond generalities due to various inter-related and complex parameters; shortcomings in current BMP related studies include: < lack of long-term monitoring of the processes in a BMP responsible for export or detention/retention of urban stormwater pollutants, absence of, or inadequate monitoring within a BMP for water quality, sediment, and vegetation, which would provide a strong understanding of factors and processes that affect pollutant fate within a BMP, and variability in BMP performance results not only due to factors affecting the performance of BMPs, but also the methods used to characterize and calculate BMP effectiveness
... In Phase 1, a conceptual framework design was developed and major components were programmed and preliminarily tested. The systematic development of the framework through a critical review of modeling needs, current and emerging data management technology, and available watershed and BMP models has been previously presented (Lai et al. 2003Lai et al. 2005;and Lai et al. 2006). The systematic design process ensures that SUSTAIN provides a platform that satisfies the needs of environmental managers with technical sophistication consistent with current and emerging technology. ...
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To assist stormwater management professionals in planning for implementation of best management practices (BMPs), efforts have been under way by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 2003 to develop a decision-support system for placement of BMPs at strategic locations in urban watersheds. This tool will help develop, evaluate, select, and place BMP options in various watershed scales based on cost and effectiveness. The system is called the S ystem for U rban S tormwater T reatment and A nalysis IN tegration (SUSTAIN). SUSTAIN has seven key components: framework manager, ArcGIS interface, watershed module, BMP module, optimization module, post-processor, and Microsoft Access database. They are integrated under a common ArcGIS platform. The completed Phase 1 work included a framework design with all major components in place. The ongoing Phase 2 work will expand the capabilities and functionalities of the system. In addition to describing the background of the SUSTAIN development and framework components, presented in this paper is a SUSTAIN's preprocessing tool to facilitate BMP selection and configuration. Also discussed are adopted simulation processes for watershed runoff computation and routing through BMPs; an approach to address dual objectives of pollution and flood control; optimization search algorithms; and a multi-tier optimization strategy to develop large watershed-scale solutions from information developed in small-scale watersheds. Finally in this paper, the issue of balancing computational efficiency during the optimization process with the process simulation details is described.
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