New modelling service predicts drainage system overloading

Smart City Water Inc., a drainage asset management software and service company for the municipal industry, has recently launched a new digital product to identify drainage system vulnerabilities.

The company’s latest product aims to predict how sewers become overloaded from excess surface water, often entering the underground pipes in unexpected ways. The service implements different geographic data to understand how overland flow and sewer systems interact. This new approach adds an additional service to the company’s Visual OTTHYMO (VO) hydraulic and hydrologic modelling platform.

"The company has used the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) Stormwater Management Modelling (SWMM) platform and connected it to comprehensive Geographic Information System (GIS) and LIDAR data preparation tools to set up models of city drainage systems in a 'dual drainage' way not previously considered,” said Edward Graham, President of Smart City Water. “The approach can now predict when, how, and the amount of rainwater that enters the sanitary and storm sewers and cause pipe overloading situations, leading to the flooding of basements, at the surface, and sewage spills to the environment."

With the increasing urban growth across major cities and regulatory requirements for sustainable drainage infrastructure, platforms using GIS are becoming important in analyzing the impact of severe storms and increasing storm resiliency.