Review of stormwater management practices

Abstract

Actual stormwater management involves the direct removal of surface water through a series of pipes to the nearest watercourse to prevent local flooding. Due to climate change and urbanisation stormwater volumes and pollution are getting more and more important leading to significant loads of sediments, heavy metals, nutrients, oils, grease, bacteria and salt pollutants which deteriorate the receiving water bodies. Consequently, modern stormwater management should aim at both flood control and pollution control especially because of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) which emphases the control of diffuse pollution as a key factor in enabling good ecological status. Therefore, there is a development of more environmentally-conscious approaches to stormwater management know as ‘Sustainable (urban) drainage systems’ (SUDS), ‘low impact development’ (LID) or ‘best management practices’ (BMPs). This report provides a review on the problem definition concerning the stormwater pollution and quantity, as well as actual physico-chemical and sustainable urbane drainage methods available for the management of stormwater. In addition, it presents an overview of the European roads runoff treatment practises and trends.