Community-wide urban
stormwater planning utilizing
LiDAR, the WinSLAMM model and
GIS
Dan Murphy
Rebecca Gronewold
UNI GeoTREE Center
April 4, 2013
Contributors
• John DeGroote
• Dr. Ramanathan Sugumaran
• Bernard Conrad
• Jeff Burnett
UNI GeoTREE Center
• GeoInformatics Training, Research, Education,
and Extension Center
• Support the use of geospatial (GIS, RS, GPS, web
mapping) technologies at UNI and throughout
Iowa
• www.geotree.uni.edu
This Project
• Funded by the Iowa Water Center
• Ongoing project
• Collaborating with
• Facilities Planning at UNI
• Paul Voorhees at PV & Associates
• City of Dubuque
Project goals
• Investigate use of LiDAR topographic data in
WinSLAMM modeling processes
• Development of loosely coupled interface between
ArcGIS and WinSLAMM (ArcSLAMM)
• More efficient development of WinSLAMM inputs
• Visualization of WinSLAMM outputs through ArcGIS
• Freely available ArcGIS tools
• Provide free training exercises for use of ArcGIS
tools for WinSLAMM
Background
• Urban watersheds are complicated
environments which contribute to flooding and
degraded water quality
• More regulatory pressure on municipalities to
develop effective urban stormwater
management strategies
Background
• Municipalities would benefit greatly by having
affordable urban storm modeling tools with a
GIS component.
• Take advantage of information about topography, land
use, and soils in GIS databases
WinSLAMM
• Windows Source Loading and Management
Model (WinSLAMM)
• Used as a planning tool to better understand
sources of urban pollutants and their control(s)
• http://winslamm.com/default.html
WinSLAMM
• Predicts relative contributions from different
source areas (roofs, streets, parking areas, etc.)
• Used in a variety of locations
• GIS often utilized in pre- and post-processing
• Overall
• Identify contributing source areas
• Provide a measure of the effectiveness of stormwater
best management practices
• Detention ponds, infiltration devices, bioretention cells, etc.
LiDAR and WinSLAMM
• Investigate the usefulness and feasibility of
incorporating LiDAR into a WinSLAMM modeling
process
• Develop tools to assist in processing of LiDAR data
• Would LiDAR allow more realistic sub-basin
boundary development of urban areas as
compared to more traditional elevation data?
LiDAR and WinSLAMM
• Can produce more detailed and accurate
representations of drainage areas
• Significant processing necessary to produce
hydrologically enforced DEM
• ArcGIS tools are being developed to help process
hydrologically enforced DEMs from LiDAR
elevation data
Digital dams in
LiDAR DEM
Tools to burn
streams and storm
sewers in DEM
Subbasin delineations
• Delineation of catchments more topographically
realistic using LiDAR as compared to manual
delineation or using lower resolution DEMs
• WinSLAMM modeling efforts will be more
realistic if subbasins are more closely matched
with actual drainage
• More effective placement of BMPs
LiDAR derived basins vs. manually delineated subbasins on UNI campus
http://www.raritanbasin.org/Projects/manasq
uan/Final%20Summary%20Report%20111308
%20revisions.pdf
ArcGIS and WinSLAMM
• Typically users might use GIS to develop source
areas and then manually enter values into the
WinSLAMM interface
• We are developing tools to automate that
process
• These ArcSLAMM tools will produce WinSLAMM
compliant databases per drainage or catchment
area which can then be run in batch mode
through WinSLAMM
Applications
• We will be applying the ArcSLAMM tools to the
Dry Run Creek and Catfish Creek watersheds
• We will be testing the effectiveness of using
local zoning data in conjunction with high
resolution land cover data being produced by
Pete Kollasch and others at Iowa DNR
• Compare to previous WinSLAMM modeling
results for UNI campus based on digitized source
areas from aerial photography
Example of utilizing land cover
and zoning data
ArcGIS database to WinSLAMM
database conversion
ArcGIS feature class
attribute table
WinSLAMM
database
Populated
WinSLAMM
interface
Conclusions
• LiDAR data provides detail that is useful for
urban storwater modeling but requires preprocessing
• We are developing a set of tools which will
couple ArcGIS and WinSLAMM together and
make modeling for small to moderately sized
urban watersheds much more practical
• We will make the ArcGIS tools freely available
and host a free training seminar this summer
THANK YOU
QUESTIONS?