Giuseppe Brunetti

A Cumulative Rainfall Function for Subhourly Design Storm in Mediterranean Urban Areas

Design storms are very useful in many hydrological and hydraulic practices and are obtained from statistical analysis of precipitation records. However considering design storms, which are often quite unlike the natural rainstorms, may result in designing oversized or undersized drainage facilities. For these reasons, in this study, a two-parameter double exponential function is proposed to parameterize historical storm events. The proposed function has been assessed against the storms selected from 5-year rainfall time series with a 1-minute resolution, measured by three meteorological stations located in Calabria, Italy. In particular, a nonlinear least square optimization has been used to identify parameters. In previous studies, several evaluation methods to measure the goodness of fit have been used with excellent performances. One parameter is related to the centroid of the rain distribution; the second one is related to high values of the standard deviation of the kurtosis for the selected events. Finally, considering the similarity between the proposed function and the Gumbel function, the two parameters have been computed with the method of moments; in this case, the correlation values were lower than those computed with nonlinear least squares optimization but sufficiently accurate for designing purposes.

On the use of global sensitivity analysis for the numerical analysis of permeable pavements

Abstract The aim of this study is to investigate the use of different global sensitivity analysis techniques in conjunction with a mechanistic model in the numerical analysis of a permeable pavement installed at the University of Calabria. The Morris method and the variance-based E-FAST procedure are applied to investigate the influence of soil hydraulic parameters on the pavement’s behavior. The analysis reveals that the Morris method represents a reliable computationally cheap alternative to variance-based procedures for screening important factors and provides the first inspection of the model. The study is completed by a combined GSA-GLUE uncertainty analysis used to evaluate the model accuracy.

A Comprehensive Approach to Stormwater Management Problems in the Next Generation Drainage Networks

In an urban environment, sewer flooding and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are a potential risk to human life, economic assets and the environment. In this way, traditional urban drainage techniques seem to be inadequate for the purpose so to mitigate such phenomena, new techniques such as Real Time Control (RTC) of urban drainage systems and Low Impact Development (LID) techniques represent a valid and cost-effective solution. This chapter lists some of the recent experiences in the field of Urban Hydrology consisting in a series of facilities, fully equipped with sensors and other electronical component, to prevent flooding in urban areas. A series of innovative numerical analysis (in Urban Hydrology research) have been proposed to define properties of the hydrological/hydraulic models used to reproduce the natural processes involved.

Metals Potential Removal Efficiency of Permeable Pavement

Permeable Pavement (PP) represents a good solution to solve stormwater management problems both in quantitative and qualitative way. In this way, the potential removal efficiency of a permeable pavement in treating metals was assessed by performing a monitoring campaign at a lab-scale system constructed for the purpose. Based on literature experiences, different relatively high-level concentrations of Copper and Zinc were applied during 8 different synthetic rainfall events. Results shown that the removal rates of Cu and Zn of the lab-scale pavements range from 85% to 92% and from 65% to 82%, respectively. Results also shown that the Cu removal rates of the lab-scale pavement are higher than Zn removal rate.

A hybrid finite volume-finite element model for the numerical analysis of furrow irrigation and fertigation

Abstract This study presents a hybrid Finite Volume – Finite Element (FV-FE) model that describes the coupled surface-subsurface flow processes occurring during furrow irrigation and fertigation. The numerical approach combines a one-dimensional description of water flow and solute transport in an open channel with a two-dimensional description of water flow and solute transport in a subsurface soil domain, thus reducing the dimensionality of the problem and the computational cost. The modeling framework includes the widely used hydrological model, HYDRUS, which can simulate the movement of water and solutes, as well as root water and nutrient uptake in variably-saturated soils. The robustness of the proposed model was examined and confirmed by mesh and time step sensitivity analyses. The model was theoretically validated by comparison with simulations conducted with the well-established model WinSRFR and experimentally validated by comparison with field-measured data from a furrow fertigation experiment conducted in the US.