Optimizing Retention Basin Networks

Abstract

Retention basins are an effective and common means of flood control.Differing from detention, retention fully contains a particular stormevent, using infiltration as the primary means of disposal. For acomplex watershed with multiple subwatersheds; however, requiringbasins to retain only flow from their contributing subwatershed mayresult in a suboptimal solution both in terms of cost and overallflood control. This paper introduce a design procedure for consideringlocation and sizing of a network of retention basins within a watershed.It utilizes the discrete dynamic programming technique to determinethe ideal locations and geometry for each basin. A design exampledemonstrates that this method may allow significant cost savingsover traditional methods.