Hydrodynamic simulation for urban drainage project: case study of Niterói

Abstract

Flooding in urban areas results mainly from both soil imperviousness and bad drainage projects. This means that without proper drainage and without adequate maintenance, floods always happen. On the other hand, traditional procedures applied to calculate urban drainage do not give good results when compared with advanced technologies available at universities and at research centres all over the world. Based on those considerations, this paper presents a computer simulation that aims to correct the Santo Antonio creek drainage problems, which is part of an urban basin located at the ocean zone of the city of Niteroi, in Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. The software named "Sobek", developed by the WL-Delft Hydraulic Institute, was applied to simulate the proposed drainage networks. The results show that it is possible to avoid flooding by constructing on site reservoirs to retain part of the rainwater. It was suggested that 2400 litres of rainwater per residence was stored in order to reduce the runoff. Keywords: urban drainage, computational simulation and flood control.