2018 Abstract Volume

How to assess hydrological performance in water sensitive infill
development
Presenting
Author:
Co-Authors:
Mr. Xuli Meng, International Water Centre, University of Queensland, Australia
Prof. Steven Kenway, University of Queensland, Australia
Dr. Ka Leung Lam, University of Queensland, Australia
Keywords
Water metabolism, Hydrological analysis, Open space ratio, Green fence, Water sensitive urban design
(WSUD), Integrated Water Management (IWM)
Highlights
This study evaluated how direct urban flows impacted the urban water metabolism indicators of a case study
in Brisbane. The novel contributions in this project are to develop the WSUD applications to improve
hydrological performance and monitor performance through water metabolism evaluation framework.
Introduction and objectives
This report is searching for better option to mitigate high volumes of stormwater runoff, spatial variation,
and decreasing liveability in Norman Creek catchment, Brisbane.
1. To model water performance (water mass balance) in research area with different scenarios;
2. To assess the hydrological performance in new WSUD options and analyse how they mitigate waterrelated
issues with Integrated Water Management (IWM) perspective;
3. To generate some recommendations for the future research and development in the study site.
Methodology approach
This study aimed to assess WSUD options for infill development in the Norman Creek catchment through
UMEF4Water.
Generally, there are six stages in the UMEF4Water for infill development, developed by Renouf, et al. (2016),
based on the original concept from Kenway, et al. (2011), involving:
1. Defining the system boundary.
2. Determining key water-related issues.
3. Collecting land use data through using spatial analysis tools.
4. Defining water sensitive infill development scenarios.
5. Generating a water mass balance.
6. Assessing water metabolic performance through indicators.
Analysis and results
The linear park from option 8 with maximised implementation has the best perviousness performance, with
nearly 6% improvement and those in the other 7 WSUD options improvement less than 3%. Noticeably, option
1 rainwater reuse and option 2 greywater recycling will only effect on a couple of factors in the table without
changing imperviousness, runoff (Rs), evapotranspiration (ET) and groundwater infiltration (GI) at all.
Moreover, the linear park also has the best hydrological performances on Rs, ET and GI. The estimated figures
indicate that compared to base case Business-As-Usual BAU in 2031, stormwater runoff will be as low as 22.3
GL/yr, which is a decrease of over 6%. For evapotranspiration and groundwater infiltration, they will increase
1.3 GL/yr (14%) and 0.2 GL/yr (17%) respectively relative to 2031 BAU.
Additionally, all 8 WSUD options are simulated and assessed by one indicator, total stream discharge (Table
5) for hydrological performance analysis. It can be clearly seen that all options will influence streams involving
both ‘natural’ flows and ‘anthropogenic’ flows, but only option 2 greywater recycling (maximised
implementation) and option 8 linear park (maximised implementation) will reduce streams outflow over 5%.
Seminar: Sustainable infrastructure for inclusive green growth 122