Flooding control and hydro-energy assessment for urban stormwater drainage systems under climate change : framework development and case study

Abstract

Flooding issue and energy shortage have become the common concerns impeding the urban development under climate change scenarios. Exploiting potential hydro-energy from urban stormwater drainage system (USDS) has multiple beneficial perspectives for controlling flooding, relieving energy shortage and mitigating the greenhouse gases emission, which has not yet been systematically investigated in previous works. In this paper, a systematical analysis framework is developed to design the flooding risk control measures and to assess the feasibility and capacity of the hydro-energy development in USDS. The GCMs and HBV models, integrated within the SWMM computation platform, are adopted to simulate the hydrological and hydraulic processes during rainfall events, with the results used to manage the flooding situation and evaluate the energy generation capacity under the influences of both historical and future climate changes. The framework is then applied to a practical case in Tung Chung town of Hong Kong. The analysis result shows that, in the studied area, it is significant and worthwhile to develop the hydro-energy in USDS, which is evidenced to be beneficial to the energy generation and the flooding risk control as well as water resources management in the urban drainage system. The developed method and obtained results of this study may provide a new perspective and technical guide for effective USDS management and operation.