The purpose of this study is to determine if Low Impact Development (LID) can effectively mitigate flooding under projected climate scenarios. LID relies on runoff management measures that seek to control rainwater volume at the source by reducing imperviousness and retaining, infiltrating and reusing rainwater. An event-driven hydrologic/hydraulic model was developed to simulate how climate change, land use and LID scenarios may affect runoff response in the Bowker Creek watershed, a 10km2 urbanized catchment located in the area of greater Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The first part of the study examined flood impacts for the 2050s (2040-2069) following the A2 emissions scenario. For the 24-hour, 25-year local design storm, results show that projected changes in rainfall intensity may increase flood extents by 21% to 50%. When combined with continued urbanization flood extents may increase by 50% to 72%.
The second part of the study identified potential locations for three LID treatments (green roofs, rain gardens and top soil amendments) and simulated their effect on peak in-stream flow rates and flood volumes. Results indicate that full implementation of modeled LID treatments can alleviate the additional flooding that is associated with the median climate change projection for the 5-year, 10-year and 25-year rainfall events. For the projected 100-year event, the volume of overland flood flows is expected to increase by 1%. This compares favourably to the estimated 29% increase without LID. In term of individual performance, rain gardens had the greatest hydrologic effect during more frequent rainfall events; green roofs had minimal effect on runoff for all modelled events; and top soil amendments had the greatest effect during the heaviest rainfall events.
The cumulative performance of LID practices depends on several variables including design specifications, level of implementation, location and site conditions. Antecedent soil moisture has a considerable influence on LID performance. The dynamic nature of soil moisture means that at times LID could meet the mitigation target and at other times it may only partially satisfy it. Future research should run continuous simulations using an appropriately long rainfall record to establish the probabilities of meeting performance requirements.
In general, simulations suggest that if future heavy rainfall events follow the median climate change projection, then LID can be used to maintain or reduce flood hazard for rainfall events up to the 25-year return period. This study demonstrates that in a smaller urban watershed, LID can play an important role in reducing the flood impacts associated with climate change. / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/4211 |
| Date | 29 August 2012 |
| Creators | Jensen, Christopher Allen |
| Contributors | Tuller, Stanton E., Peters, Daniel Lee |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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