SWMM Simulation of the Storm Water Volume Control Performance of Permeable Pavement Systems

The reliability of the low-impact development (LID) module of the widely used Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) for modeling the runoff reduction performance of permeable pavement systems was evaluated through example applications with rainfall data from Atlanta. The method of calculating infiltration through the pavement layers of permeable pavement systems of the LID module was found to be inadequate when the depths of the pavement layer are less than 120 mm and the computational time steps are longer than 30 min. An alternative method of representing permeable pavement systems as equivalent regular subcatchments is proposed. Using this method, the hydrologic operation of permeable pavement systems can be modeled by SWMM or other hydrologic models.