Understanding how changing rainfall may impact on urban drainage systems; lessons from projects in the UK and USA

Urban flooding and wet weather pollution are recognised as significant problems across the world, and changes in rainfall patterns arising as a consequence of climate change are likely to exacerbate these problems. This paper shares learning from a ground-breaking project led by CH2M for UK Water Industry Research and approaches used in other CH2M projects around the world. The UK project has explored the use of very high resolution (1.5 km) climate model output and climate analogues; other projects have used other methods to derive new design rainfall statistics commonly used in modelling wet weather collection systems for flooding and pollution investigations. Estimates of rainfall change have been used within collection system models to estimate the flooding and pollution impact of these changes. The methods applied in these projects can be replicated globally.