The sanitary sewer unit hydrograph model: A comprehensive tool for wastewater flow modeling and inflow-infiltration simulations

Gabriel Perez; Jesus D. Gomez-Velez; Stanley B. Grant

doi:10.1016/j.watres.2023.120997

The sanitary sewer unit hydrograph model: A comprehensive tool for wastewater flow modeling and inflow-infiltration simulations

Gabriel Perez, Jesus D. Gomez-Velez, Stanley B. Grant

Watershed Systems Modeling

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Sanitary sewer systems are critical urban water infrastructure that protect both human and environmental health. Their design, operation, and monitoring require novel modeling techniques that capture dominant processes while allowing for computationally efficient simulations. Open water flow in sewers and rivers are intrinsically similar processes. With this in mind, we formulated a new parsimonious model inspired by the Width Function Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph (WFIUH) approach, widely used to predict rainfall-runoff relationships in watersheds, to a sanitary sewer system consisting of nearly 10,000 sewer conduits and 120,000 residential and commercial sewage connections in Northern Virginia, U.S.A. Model predictions for the three primary components of sanitary flow, including Base Wastewater Flow (BWF), Groundwater Infiltration (GWI), and Runoff Derived Infiltration and Inflow (RDII), compare favorably with the more computationally demanding industry-standard Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). This novel application of the WFIUH modeling framework should support a number of critical water quality endpoints, including (i) sewer hydrograph separation through the quantification of BWF, GWI, and RDII outflows, (ii) evaluation of the impact of new urban developments on sewage flow dynamics, (iii) monitoring and mitigation of sanitary sewer overflows, and (iv) design and interpretation of wastewater surveillance studies.

Original language	English
Article number	120997
Journal	Water Research
Volume	249
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2023.120997
State	Published - Feb 1 2024

Funding

This study was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (awards OIA-2312326, OIA-2020814, EAR-1830172, and OIA-2021015) and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, United States, Biological and Environmental Research, United States. This work is a product of two programs: (i) Environmental System Science Program, as part of the Watershed Dynamics and Evolution (WaDE) Science Focus Area at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the IDEAS-Watersheds project, and (ii) Data Management Program, as part of the ExaSheds project. Census data was obtained from Fairfax County's Open Geospatial Data site (https://data-fairfaxcountygis.opendata.arcgis.com/), and the TAZ data was obtained from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (https://www.mwcog.org). Both datasets were accessed on June 14, 2022. The scripts to implement the SS-WFIUH are publicly available at https://github.com/gomezvelezlab/SanitarySewer-WFIUH. This study was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (awards OIA-2312326 , OIA-2020814 , EAR-1830172 , and OIA-2021015 ) and the U.S. Department of Energy , Office of Science, United States , Biological and Environmental Research, United States . This work is a product of two programs: (i) Environmental System Science Program, as part of the Watershed Dynamics and Evolution (WaDE) Science Focus Area at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the IDEAS-Watersheds project, and (ii) Data Management Program, as part of the ExaSheds project.

Keywords

Base wastewater flow
Groundwater infiltration
Runoff derived infiltration and inflow
Sewer network
Unit hydrograph
Weighted width function

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10.1016/j.watres.2023.120997

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title = "The sanitary sewer unit hydrograph model: A comprehensive tool for wastewater flow modeling and inflow-infiltration simulations",

abstract = "Sanitary sewer systems are critical urban water infrastructure that protect both human and environmental health. Their design, operation, and monitoring require novel modeling techniques that capture dominant processes while allowing for computationally efficient simulations. Open water flow in sewers and rivers are intrinsically similar processes. With this in mind, we formulated a new parsimonious model inspired by the Width Function Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph (WFIUH) approach, widely used to predict rainfall-runoff relationships in watersheds, to a sanitary sewer system consisting of nearly 10,000 sewer conduits and 120,000 residential and commercial sewage connections in Northern Virginia, U.S.A. Model predictions for the three primary components of sanitary flow, including Base Wastewater Flow (BWF), Groundwater Infiltration (GWI), and Runoff Derived Infiltration and Inflow (RDII), compare favorably with the more computationally demanding industry-standard Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). This novel application of the WFIUH modeling framework should support a number of critical water quality endpoints, including (i) sewer hydrograph separation through the quantification of BWF, GWI, and RDII outflows, (ii) evaluation of the impact of new urban developments on sewage flow dynamics, (iii) monitoring and mitigation of sanitary sewer overflows, and (iv) design and interpretation of wastewater surveillance studies.",

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author = "Gabriel Perez and Gomez-Velez, \{Jesus D.\} and Grant, \{Stanley B.\}",

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AB - Sanitary sewer systems are critical urban water infrastructure that protect both human and environmental health. Their design, operation, and monitoring require novel modeling techniques that capture dominant processes while allowing for computationally efficient simulations. Open water flow in sewers and rivers are intrinsically similar processes. With this in mind, we formulated a new parsimonious model inspired by the Width Function Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph (WFIUH) approach, widely used to predict rainfall-runoff relationships in watersheds, to a sanitary sewer system consisting of nearly 10,000 sewer conduits and 120,000 residential and commercial sewage connections in Northern Virginia, U.S.A. Model predictions for the three primary components of sanitary flow, including Base Wastewater Flow (BWF), Groundwater Infiltration (GWI), and Runoff Derived Infiltration and Inflow (RDII), compare favorably with the more computationally demanding industry-standard Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). This novel application of the WFIUH modeling framework should support a number of critical water quality endpoints, including (i) sewer hydrograph separation through the quantification of BWF, GWI, and RDII outflows, (ii) evaluation of the impact of new urban developments on sewage flow dynamics, (iii) monitoring and mitigation of sanitary sewer overflows, and (iv) design and interpretation of wastewater surveillance studies.

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The sanitary sewer unit hydrograph model: A comprehensive tool for wastewater flow modeling and inflow-infiltration simulations

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