Validating hydraulic connectivity for smart stormwater management
- Brugerhistorier
An ambitious pilot project aims to improve flood control and water quality in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon, one of America’s most biologically rich estuaries.
The Smart Watershed Network Management (SWNM) project envisions a future where stormwater ponds are managed as interconnected elements within the broader watershed, rather than as isolated structures. The “smart ponds” will leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to anticipate necessary storage volumes, determine optimal detention times, and mimic natural flow rates to protect sensitive ecosystems. Launched by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with Arup, the project is developing the world's first SWNM model, implementation framework, and pilot installation that rely on "digital twins" of watershed components to inform management decisions in real time.
Alden Summerville, Geospatial Developer & Digital Consultant for Arup, led the site selection analysis to determine the best locations to test the new technology. There are over 10,000 stormwater ponds within the Indian River Lagoon watershed, and Alden had to parse through them all.
“We were searching for several ponds in close proximity that were hydraulically connected and part of the same ‘micro-watershed,’ a small area of land that drains to a single point,” he clarifies.
“With so many micro-watersheds to review, quality assurance was a really daunting task. That’s where Scalgo Live came in. The Watershed tool was key in validating and interrogating our outputs.”
Alden Summerville, Geospatial Developer & Digital Consultant at Arup
Visualize depression capacity with colored volume banding. Analyze how contributing drainage evolves under various rainfall conditions for hydraulically connected areas.
“With so many micro-watersheds to review, quality assurance was a really daunting task. That’s where Scalgo Live came in. The Watershed tool was key in validating and interrogating our outputs,” Alden explains.
Alden was able to assess hydraulic connectivity at both regional and site-scales by querying along flow accumulation paths. He also highlighted the Profile tool as a way to quickly gather terrain insights that were critical to an analysis sensitive to minor terrain features. “We used the Profile Tool to examine the dimensions and depths of channels and swales in granular detail.”
Cut a profile in one motion to examine the terrain.
"Having an interactive workspace to validate our analysis on call with the client wouldn’t have been possible without Scalgo Live.”
Alden Summerville, Geospatial Developer & Digital Consultant at Arup
The project results were compiled into a technical report that shared his findings in detail. Alden also found Scalgo Live useful in communicating his methodology and due diligence during meetings with the Nature Conservancy, supplementing the static deliverable.
“Scalgo Live helped us because the client asked a lot of questions. Our output was a static PDF report, and it didn’t give us that ability to really show that the analysis was holding up,” Alden concludes. “Having an interactive workspace to validate our analysis on call with the client wouldn’t have been possible without Scalgo Live.”
See the full webinar
For more inspiration on how to use the Flash Flood Mapping Tool in Scalgo Live, watch the webinar "Solving Surface Water Challenges in the US."
