Author(s): Halla Gammoh, Asaad Shamseldin

Linked Author(s): Asaad Yahia Shamseldin

Keywords: Climate change; LID; MarkSimGCM; PCSWMM; Urbanization;

Abstract: Water scarcity is a continuing concern in Jordan which is currently witnessing high population growth and rapid urbanization. Urban hydrology is increasingly stressed by urbanization and climate change. LID is a sustainable stormwater management approach evolved after the conventional approaches failed to mitigate urban hydrological changes. This paper investigates the impacts of urbanization and climate change on stormwater management in Amman, Jordan. It also addresses the efficiency of LID implementation as a mitigation measure. The analysis is based on comparing the hydrological responses of a 500-hectares catchment in the predevelopment conditions with two hypothetical future settings of post-development with and without LID implementation. The analysis is performed using the software Personal Computer Storm Water Management Model (PCSWMM). The climate change impact is quantified by predicting and analyzing daily rainfall events for the period 2020-2050 in Amman using the weather generator MarkSimGCM which employs 17 global climate models.
Results have shown that LID devices were effective in controlling the adverse urbanization impacts at small return period storms (2, 5, and 10 years). However, LID efficiency reduced for higher return period storms and the predevelopment conditions were not fully restored. The analysis has shown that the global climate model (GFDL-ESM2M) results best fitted the historical rainfall record available for Jordan. The model output demonstrated an insignificant impact of climate change on precipitation in Amman indicating that stormwater systems’ design and performance are most sensitive to urbanization rather than the impact of climate change.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/38WC092019-1652

Year: 2019