Author(s): W. H. C. Subhashini; G. A. Hewa; D. Pezzaniti
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Keywords: SWMM; Scott Creek; Groundwater; PEST; Rainfall–runoff model
Abstract: Although U. S. Environmental Protection Agency's Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) is an urban runoff model, its application in rural catchments is widely acceptable due to the flexibility of the model. SWMM is increasingly used in rural catchment for understanding future urbanization scenarios/impacts and investigating the effectiveness of Water Sensitive Urban design (WSUD) or Best Management Practice (BMP) measures. This paper discusses the complexity and the issues encountered when modeling hydrologic response of a rural catchment using SWMM and how these issues were managed to develop reliable model predictions. The challenges encountered include, modeling subsurface flow using the simple Groundwater module in SWMM, groundwater modeling with unknown aquifer properties and choosing the appropriate parameters and parameter spaces for model calibration. Scott Creek catchment in the Mount Lofty Ranges in South Australia was chosen as the study site to demonstrate how PEST (Parameter ESTimation), automatic calibration software was incorporated into SWMM and how the above issues were handled.
Year: 2011