Hydrologic And Water Quality Modeling For Green Infrastructure

Project 3 addresses the challenges in design and regulatory community standards to implementing green infrastructure and provides computer modeling tools to better predict receiving water impacts of both water quantity and quality. Flood control historically has been the focus of urban stormwater management because of the need to protect public health and safety. However, over the past four decades, studies of receiving waters have demonstrated substantial water quality degradation associated with urban runoff discharge to streams, lakes and groundwater. Therefore, appropriate urban stormwater management in the Chesapeake Bay Basin and beyond must address both flood control and water quality. Modeling has been used to predict the impacts of urban runoff and to evaluate the benefits of a variety of management techniques, such as detention, harvesting, etc., but these models have been limited in scope (peak flow calculation) and likely have not addressed both flooding and water quality. The increasing implications of climate and land cover change make many historical modeling approaches unsuitable for the assessment of long-term solutions.