Experiments on contaminant transport from sewer infrastructure within shallow floodwater

Abstract

Understanding the transport of soluble contamination in urban floodwater is an important aspect of public health risk assessment. However due to significant measurement complexity, there is a current lack of datasets to elucidate the associated relevant flow pathways, local velocity fields and turbulent diffusion processes. This paper evaluates three alternate experimental methodologies to quantify 2D contaminant transport at scales typical of shallow urban floodwater. It further provides a new open access dataset describing transport processes from an experimental scale model of floodwater under sewer surcharge conditions, featuring different geometrical and hydraulic configurations. Results show broad agreement between the different experimental techniques, with small but notable differences associated with measurement and experimental limitations. Results and datasets also demonstrate the considerable influence of hydraulic and geometrical complexity on transport processes, and sensitivity of the concentration levels in model street networks to heterogeneous flow pathways and velocity gradients.