Stormwater Control Measures: Optimization Methods for Sizing and Selection

Abstract

Stormwater management in urban areas remains a challenging water-resources and environmental problem worldwide. This work develops and tests two methods for optimizing stormwater control measures. The first method relies on a linear programming formulation to find the optimal sizes of stormwater control measures to be deployed at selected locations. The second method uses binary linear integer programming to determine the optimal type of stormwater control measures of standardized dimensions to be deployed at selected locations. Both methods minimize the total cost of deploying stormwater control measures, subject to constraints on available budget, volumetric water balance, allowable stormwater volumes, and water-quality characteristics. Two examples illustrate the step-by-step formulation of the linear programming and the binary linear integer programming methods for the optimization of stormwater control measures, and provide solutions to the problems of their optimal sizing and selection. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of meeting stormwater retention and water-quality objectives by the optimal deployment of stormwater control measures as proposed in this work.