Sustainability Evaluation Framework of Urban Stormwater Drainage Options for Arid Environments Using Hydraulic Modeling and Multicriteria Decision-Making

Stormwater drainage systems in urban areas located in arid environmental regions generally consist of storm-sewer networks and man-made ponds for the collection and disposal of runoff, respectively. Due to expansion in cities’ boundaries as a result of population growth, the capacity of existing drainage systems has been exhausted. Therefore, such systems overflow even during the smaller (than the design) return period floods. At the same time, changing rainfall patterns and flash floods due to climate change are other phenomena that need appropriate attention. Consequently, the municipalities in arid environmental regions are facing challenges for effective decision-making concerning (i) improvement needs for drainage networks for safe collection of stormwater, (ii) selection of most feasible locations for additional ponds, and (iii) evaluation of other suitable options, such as micro-tunneling. In this research, a framework has been developed to evaluate different stormwater drainage options for urban areas of arid regions. Rainfall-runoff modeling was performed with the help of Hydrological-Engineering-Centre, Hydrological-Modelling-System (HEC-HMS). To evaluate the efficacy of each option for handling a given design flood, hydraulic-modeling was performed using SewerGEMS. Meteorological and topographical data was gathered from the Municipality of Buraydah and processed to generate different inputs required for hydraulic modeling. Finally, multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) was performed to evaluate all the options on the basis of four sustainability criteria, i.e., flood risk, economic viability, environmental impacts, and technical constraints. Criteria weights were established through group decision-making using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Preference-Ranking-Organization-Method for Enrichment-Evaluation (PROMETHEE II) was used for final ranking of stormwater drainage options. The proposed framework has been implemented on a case of Buraydah City, Qassim, Saudi Arabia, to evaluate its pragmatism. Micro-tunnelling was found to be the most sustainable option.