On the use of a real-time control approach for urban stormwater management

The real-time control (RTC) system is a valid and cost-effective solution for urban stormwater management. This paper aims to evaluate the beneficial effect on urban flooding risk mitigation produced by applying RTC techniques to an urban drainage network by considering different control configuration scenarios. To achieve the aim, a distributed real-time system, validated in previous studies, was considered. This approach uses a smart moveable gates system, controlled by software agents, managed by a swarm intelligence algorithm. By running the different scenarios by a customized version of the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM), the findings obtained show a redistribution of conduits filling degrees, exploiting the whole system storage capacity, with a significant reduction of node flooding and total flood volume.