An alternate approach for transient flow modeling in urban drainage systems

Implementing control structures such as gates at suitable locations in the urban drainage network enables its improved utility by actively controlling and optimizing the flow during a flood event. The successful operation of the control structure is fully governed by the suitability and efficiency of the control strategy adopted, which in turn depends on the response characteristics of the urban drainage system under different flow conditions. For an extreme rainfall event, it is necessary to model the transient flow in the urban drainage system. However, such an exercise is mostly restricted by the limited data and lack of in-depth survey of urban drainage systems in most of the developing countries like India. Taking this into consideration, an alternate approach has been presented in this paper for modeling the transient flow in the urban drainage system under limited data availability. The results obtained have also been compared with the finite difference model using four-point implicit scheme in time domain. The developed model can be used for the computation of temporal distribution of water surface profile with special consideration of lateral inflow. The application has been demonstrated by applying it to a representative catchment in Mumbai, India. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007