Storm Water Management Model

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) is a dynamic rainfall–runoff–subsurface runoff simulation model used for single-event to long-term (continuous) simulation of the surface/subsurface hydrology quantity and quality from primarily urban/suburban areas. It can simulate the Rainfall- runoff, runoff, evaporation, infiltration and groundwater connection for roots, streets, grassed areas, rain gardens and ditches and pipes, for example. The hydrology component of SWMM operates on a collection of subcatchment areas divided into impervious and pervious areas with and without depression storage to predict runoff and pollutant loads from precipitation, evaporation and infiltration losses from each of the subcatchment. Besides, low impact development (LID) and best management practice areas on the subcatchment can be modeled to reduce the impervious and pervious runoff. The routing or hydraulics section of SWMM transports this water and possible associated water quality constituents through a system of closed pipes, open channels, storage/treatment devices, ponds, storages, pumps, orifices, weirs, outlets, outfalls and other regulators. SWMM tracks the quantity and quality of the flow generated within each subcatchment, and the flow rate, flow depth, and quality of water in each pipe and channel during a simulation period composed of multiple fixed or variable time steps. The water quality constituents such as water quality constituents can be simulated from buildup on the subcatchments through washoff to a hydraulic network with optional first order decay and linked pollutant removal, best management practice and low-impact development (LID) removal and treatment can be simulated at selected storage nodes. SWMM is one of the hydrology transport models which the EPA and other agencies have applied widely throughout North America and through consultants and universities throughout the world. The latest update notes and new features can be found on the EPA website in the download section. Recently added in November 2015 were the EPA SWMM 5.1 Hydrology Manual (Volume I) and in 2016 the EPA SWMM 5.1 Hydraulic Manual (Volume II) and EPA SWMM 5.1 Water Quality (including LID Modules) Volume (III) + Errata”The EPA storm water management model (SWMM) is a dynamic rainfall-runoff-routing simulation model used for single event or long-term (continuous) simulation of runoff quantity and quality from primarily urban areas. The runoff component of SWMM operates on a collection of subcatchment areas that receive precipitation and generate runoff and pollutant loads. The routing portion of SWMM transports this runoff through a system of pipes, channels, storage/treatment devices, pumps, and regulators. SWMM tracks the quantity and quality of runoff generated within each subcatchment, and the flow rate, flow depth, and quality of water in each pipe and channel during a simulation period divided into multiple time steps.SWMM was first developed between 1969–1971 and has undergone four major upgrades since those years. The major upgrades were: (1) Version 2 in 1973-1975, (2) Version 3 in 1979-1981, (3) Version 4 in 1985-1988 and (4) Version 5 in 2001-2004. A list of the major changes and post-2004 changes are shown in Table 1. The current SWMM edition, Version 5/5.1.012, is a complete re-write of the previous Fortran releases in the programming language C, and it can be run under Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 and also with a recomplilation under Unix. The code for SWMM5 is open source and public domain code that can be downloaded from the EPA Web Site.SWMM conceptualizes a drainage system as a series of water and material flows between several major environmental compartments. These compartments and the SWMM objects they contain include:The simulated model parameters for subcatchments are surface roughness, depression storage, slope, flow path length; for Infiltration: Horton: max/min rates and decay constant; Green-Ampt: hydraulic conductivity, initial moisture deficit and suction head; Curve Number: NRCS (SCS) Curve number; All: time for saturated soil to fully drain; for Conduits: Manning’s roughness; for Water Quality: buildup/washoff function coefficients, first-order decay coefficients, removal equations. A study area can be divided into any number of individual subcatchments, each of which drains to a single point. Study areas can range in size from a small portion of a single lot up to thousands of acres. SWMM uses hourly or more frequent rainfall data as input and can be run for single events or in a continuous fashion for any number of years.SWMM 5 accounts for various hydrologic processes that produce surface and subsurface runoff from urban areas. These include:Steady-flow routing represents the simplest type of routing possible (actually no routing) by assuming that within each computational time step flow is uniform and steady. Thus it simply translates inflow hydrographs at the upstream end of the conduit to the downstream end, with no delay or change in shape. The normal flow equation is used to relate flow rate to flow area (or depth).One of the great advances in SWMM 5 was the integration of urban/suburban subsurface flow with the hydraulic computations of the drainage network. This advance is a tremendous improvement over the separate subsurface hydrologic and hydraulic computations of the previous versions of SWMM because it allows the modeler to conceptually model the same interactions that occur physically in the real open channel/shallow aquifer environment. The SWMM 5 numerical engine calculates the surface runoff, subsurface hydrology and assigns the current climate data at either the wet or dry hydrologic time step. The hydraulic calculations for the links, nodes, control rules and boundary conditions of the network are then computed at either a fixed or variable time step within the hydrologic time step by using interpolation routines and the simulated hydrologic starting and ending values. The versions of SWMM 5 greater than SWMM 5.1.007 allow the modeler to simulate climate changes by globally changing the rainfall, temperature, and evaporation using monthly adjustments.The low-impact development (LID) function was new to SWMM 5.0.019/20/21/22 and SWMM 5.1+ It is integrated within the subcatchment and allows further refinement of the overflows, infiltration flow and evaporation in rain barrel, swales, permeable paving, green roof, rain garden, bioretention and infiltration trench. The term Low-impact development (Canada/US) is used in Canada and the United States to describe a land planning and engineering design approach to managing stormwater runoff. In recent years many states in the US have adopted LID concepts and standards to enhance their approach to reducing the harmful potential for storm water pollution in new construction projects. LID takes many forms but can generally be thought of as an effort to minimize or prevent concentrated flows of storm water leaving a site. To do this the LID practice suggests that when impervious surfaces (concrete, etc.) are used, they are periodically interrupted by pervious areas which can allow the storm water to infiltrate (soak into the earth)The SWMM 5.0.001 to 5.1.013 main components are: rain gages, watersheds, LID controls or BMP features such as Wet and Dry Ponds, nodes, links, pollutants, landuses, time patterns, curves, time series, controls, transects, aquifers, unit hydrographs, snowmelt and shapes (Table 3). Other related objects are the types of Nodes and the Link Shapes. The purpose of the objects is to simulate the major components of the hydrologic cycle, the hydraulic components of the drainage, sewer or stormwater network and the buildup/washoff functions that allow the simulation of water quality constituents. A watershed simulation starts with a precipitation time history. SWMM 5 has many types of open and closed pipes and channels: dummy, circular, filled circular, rectangular closed, rectangular open, trapezoidal, triangular, parabolic, power function, rectangular triangle, rectangle round, modified baskethandle, horizontal ellipse, vertical ellipse, arch, eggshaped, horseshoe, gothic, catenary, semielliptical, baskethandle, semicircular, irregular, custom and force main.The SWMM 3 and SWMM 4 converter can convert up to two files from the earlier SWMM 3 and 4 versions at one time to SWMM 5. Typically you would convert a Runoff and Transport file to SWMM 5 or a Runoff and Extran File to SWMM 5. If you have a combination of a SWMM 4 Runoff, Transport and Extran network then you will have to convert it in pieces and copy and paste the two data sets together to make one SWMM 5 data set. The x,y coordinate file is only necessary if you do not have existing x, y coordinates on the D1 line of the SWMM 4 Extran input data[ set. You can use the command File=>Define Ini File to define the location of the ini file. The ini file will save your conversion project input data files and directories.The Storm Water Management Model Climate Adjustment Tool (SWMM-CAT) is a new addition to SWMM5 (December 2014). It is a simple to use software utility that allows future climate change projections to be incorporated into the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). SWMM was recently updated to accept a set of monthly adjustment factors for each of these time series that could represent the impact of future changes in climatic conditions. SWMM-CAT provides a set of location-specific adjustments that derived from global climate change models run as part of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) archive (Figure 4). SWMM-CAT is a utility that adds location-specific climate change adjustments to a Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) project file. Adjustments can be applied on a monthly basis to air temperature, evaporation rates, and precipitation, as well as to the 24-hour design storm at different recurrence intervals. The source of these adjustments are global climate change models run as part of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP3) archive. Downscaled results from this archive were generated and converted into changes with respect to historical values by USEPA's CREAT project (http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/watersecurity/climate/creat.cfm).Other external programs that aid in the generation of data for the EPA SWMM 5 model include: SUSTAIN, BASINS, SSOAP and the EPA’s National Stormwater Calculator (SWC) which is a desktop application that estimates the annual amount of rainwater and frequency of runoff from a specific site anywhere in the United States (including Puerto Rico). The estimates are based on local soil conditions, land cover, and historic rainfall records (Figure 5).A number of software packages use the SWMM5 engine, including many commercial software packages. Some of these software packages include: