Modeling stormwater sewer systems using high resolution data

More than 54% of the world population lives in urban areas, and this percentage is projected to increase rapidly in future years. This growth significantly affects the hydrological cycle, which translates into social and economic costs due to urban flooding. This thesis develops a procedure to evaluate the current storm water infrastructure using Airborne LiDAR data. This evaluation is essential to mitigate and prevent the effect of floods in urban areas. Airborne LiDAR data provides the elevation data necessary to characterize the elements involved in the storm water system. The processing of this data, digitization, and characterization of the storm drainage system is computed with ArcGIS, Geographic Information System (GIS) software. Scenarios for 4 return periods (2, 10, 25 and 100 years) are modeled using StormCAD in order to evaluate the capacity of the stormwater sewer system in the northwest area of The University of Texas at Austin main campus. The performance of the drainage system might work under strain for a 100-year storm event; therefore, it is suggested to modify the pipe sizes to prevent flooding in the area analyzed. The results indicate that the methodology proposed for evaluating the current conditions of a stormwater drainage system produces valid results, but can be improved using Ground-based LiDAR data.