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Current Capabilities and Planned Enhancements of SUSTAIN
Citation:
LAI, DENNIS, L. Shoemaker, K. Alvi, J. Riverson, AND J. Zhen. Current Capabilities and Planned Enhancements of SUSTAIN. Presented at EWRI/ASCE World Environmental & Water Resources Congress 2010, Challenges of Change, Providence, RI, May 16 - 20, 2010.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Efforts have been under way by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 2003 to develop a decision-support system for placement of BMPs at strategic locations in urban watersheds. This system is call the System for Urban Stormwater Treatment and Analysis INtergration (SUSTAIN). The tool is designed for use by watershed and stormwater practitioners to develop, evaluate, and select optimal BMP options for various watershed scales based on cost and effectiveness. SUSTAIN seamlessly integrates GIS analysis and visualization, watershed/BMP simulation, cost, and system optimization. It incorporates a revolutionary concept of developing a cost-effectiveness curve of watershed decision making. In addition, an equally innovative multi-tier concept was incorporated for performing staged optimizations from smaller watersheds to a larger watershed. The public release of the SUSTAIN Version 1.0 is planned in October 2009. In summary, SUSTAIN includes four key components: (1) a BMP site evaluation tool which uses the ArcGIS platform and user-guided rules to determine site suitability for various BMP options, (2) a watershed module that integrates locally derived data with watershed simulation models to predict flow and pollutant loading, (3) a stand-alone BMP module that performs process-based simulation, and (4) an optimization module that performs cost estimating and combines performance and cost data of various design alternatives. SUSTAIN is designed to link with external models for inputs of flow and pollutant time series. It also has internal stand-alone sub-modules for performing watershed/landscape runoff simulation, BMP process simulation, conduit routing, and stream conveyance and pollutant routing. The framework includes a suite of system and interface capabilities. System features emphasize the use of GIS-based visualization and support for developing watershed simulation networks that may include sequences of land parcels, management practices, and steam reaches. Various practitioners, municipalities, and watershed groups at the regional and local levels can use SUSTAIN to address a variety of stormwater managment planning questions on: (1) developing TMDL implementation plans, (2) identifying management practices to achieve pollutant reductions in an area under an MS4 stormwater permit, (3) determining upstream source control strategies for reducing volume and peak flows to CSO systems, and (4) evaluating the benefits of distributed BMP implementation on water quantity and quality in urban streams. EPA has committed additional resources to showcase applications and perform needed enhancements to better facilitate the setup and application of SUSTAIN while improving output accuracy and credibility. In addition to describing the current capabilities of SUSTAIN, this paper will also highlight the planned enhancement to the process modeling of wetlands/swales/buffers and porous and pervious pavements, BMP selection and placement algorithms, cost database, multiple-scale applications, and visualization.
