Assessment framework to select sustainable storm water management options for urban areas

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and land cover changes have increased the quantity of storm water flow in urban areas. In Sri Lanka, local authorities generally prefer conventional drainage solutions rather than providing innovative sustainable solutions in storm water management (SWM). Due to the lack of technological innovations and required standards, development plans prepared by local authorities have not been able to identify alternative practices for storm water management. Hence, this study focuses on the identification of effective and sustainable urban storm water management alternatives in the context of developing countries. Sustainable SWM alternatives that are identified through the literature have been classified under four main sectors i.e. Buildings, Open Spaces, Roads and Sideways. Evaluation is based on the comparative analysis between the existing SWM strategy and alternative SWM strategies under qualitative and quantitative criteria. Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) was utilized for the evaluation and the most suitable SWM alternative for urban areas has been selected based on equal weighting and experts’ aggregation weighting mechanism. The framework has been tested in the Homagama Divisional Secretariat Division (DSD), Sri Lanka which is one of the fast-growing urban localities in the Colombo District, Sri Lanka. This framework could be adopted for the evaluation of sustainable SWM alternatives for urban areas and is also a useful tool for planners engaged in the preparation of development plans.