Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

As demands placed upon urban drainage systems continue to increase due to growth in urban areas, climate change and aging infrastructure, decentralized solutions are increasingly sought. However, the lessons learned over the years of the large stock of existing infrastructure, and opportunities for their design improvements and retrofit options are frequently overlooked. In addition, the modelling tools have not kept pace with technological advancements, including the increasing options for systemwide monitoring and control - the `smart water systems'. The proposed research will address some of these issues by optimizing the design of the Etobicoke Exfiltration System, a technology identified through past monitoring to present a potential for better performance, using a combination of physical and numerical modelling and integration into existing stormwater modelling tool. Techniques for low-cost, widespread monitoring of sewer systems will be developed, along with analytical tools that take advantage of vastly increased volume of measurements of system performance in continuous identification and quantification of detrimental extraneous flows. Necessary modifications to stormwater management models will be developed to allow evaluation of distributed monitoring and control, along with optimization methodologies, leading to the development of design guidance for smart stormwater systems. The outputs of this research are meant to address some of the key gaps perceived to currently exist in the methodologies for urban drainage modelling and optimization.