Integrating software technologies to improve stormwater management design and decision-making

Conrad Stang and Mike Petepiece

ABSTRACT

Advancements in CAD and GIS technologies allows for easy integration with stormwater management modeling software. This improves efficiency and accuracy in the development of stormwater management models. The result is a cost-saving methodology for analyzing existing or proposed stormwater management systems.

Autodesk Civil 3D software provides the ability to produce flexible designs and adapt more efficiently to revisions. A common challenge for stormwater management modellers is to rapidly and accurately update models to reflect design changes.  SWMM based dual-drainage models can often consist of hundreds of interconnected elements and associated parameters, many of which must be manually added to the model.  The development of techniques to automatically generate and update as many model elements and parameters as possible can significantly reduce time requirements and ensure consistency with design drawings by reducing the potential for input errors.

The methodology presented in this paper demonstrates how to rapidly build and update a dual drainage SWMM model representing both the minor and major systems using widely used design and modeling software (PCSWMM, Autodesk Civil3D / Autodesk SSA, HEC-RAS). The case study presented in this paper is the eQuinelle Golf Course Subdivision (Kemptville, Ontario). The challenges with this project were budgetary constraints, size of the site and design changes. The result is a model that ensures consistency with design drawings while saving both time and resources.


Permanent link: