As part of Working Package 3, the Institute of Ecology, TU Berlin, is developing a tool (Product 2) to identify connectivity patterns of diffuse pollution in cities. The connectivity analysis will guide future re-design of urban drainage strategies towards a more targeted pollution control, to be more cost-effective and to move towards active management yielding zero pollution.
A brief presentation on the conceptual development of the tool and the current work progress was given by Prof. Dr. Eva Paton during the second consortium meeting of WATERUN at Aarhus, Denmark. The tool will be an interactive, open and web-based tool from GitHub. The first part of the tool includes the identification of the structure of polluted surfaces (configuration: layout of surfaces, composition: types of pollution) stored in a multidimensional matrix of relevant source areas and linked to a pollution database. The second part includes the identification of pertinent runoff events (intra- and inter-annual variability, extreme years, climatic variations and spatiotemporal disaggregation of available input data for Europe).
The essential data needed for the tool development consists of meteorological data, geodata, and pollution data. Currently, the team is working on the second part of the tool – Analysis of urban runoff frequency for a transect across Europe. High-resolution rainfall data is available for Germany, France, UK and hourly ER5 data for Europe. The seasonal variations in runoff frequency, climate change impact, effect of climate difference in different geographic regions are important for the proposed EU directive on wastewater. The runoff computation is carried out in SWMM.
The team aims to develop a prototype of the identification tool for Aarhus City by January 2024. The deliverable will also include a handbook on the assessment of structural and functional connectivity of diffuse pollution.
Figure 1: Conceptual development of the identification tool
Authors: Boney Anna Joseph, TUB; Nasrin Haacke, BAM and TUB (02/06/2023)