Surface Runoff in Urban Area – Case Study

Abstract

The world’s population nowadays is concentrated in urban areas. This change in demography has brought land-use and land-cover changes that have a number of documented effects on stream flow. The most consistent effect is an increase in impervious surfaces within urban catchments, which alters the hydrology and geomorphology of streams. In addition to imperviousness, runoff from urbanized surfaces as well as municipal and industrial discharges results in increasing floods in urbanized areas as it decreasing river bed capacity for flow. Rainwater management should be considered as a sustainable strategy for reconstruction of rural and urban settlements from the aspects of environmental management and social criteria. The paper presents the current state of runoff condition in the study area taking into account the urban development in the last 30 years, mainly newly built hypermarkets. The goal of the study was an evaluation of surface condition, calculation of the runoff coefficient and design of potential measures to stabilize conditions in the drainage basin of Myslavský creek in eastern part of Slovakia.