Control of runoff peak flow for urban flooding mitigation

Abstract

Urban flooding has become a serious but not well-resolved problem during the last decades. Traditional mainstream facilities, such as vegetated roofs, permeable pavements, and others, are effective to eliminate urban flooding only in case of small rains because the water-retaining and detaining capacities of these traditional facilities are limited. Here, we propose a new buffer tank buried in soil to deal with rainwater onsite as peak-flow control for urban flooding mitigation. Experiments showed that the buffer tank intercepts the surface runoff and discharges the intercepted water through a designed outlet orifice. By properly setting the cross-sectional area of the orifice, the tank extends the drainage duration several times longer than that of the rainfall duration. It is found that the buffer tank attenuates the peak flow greater at heavier rain. At small rain (<2.5 mm), the tank is always unfilled, preserving storage spaces for detaining rainwater in case of heavy rain. The buffer tank is thus greatly helpful to mitigate the flooding problem, avoiding being saturated by small long-lasting rain.