Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959

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Journal of Hydrology
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Research papers

Staged optimization of urban drainage systems considering climate change T

and hydrological model uncertainty
Hongshi Xua,b, Chao Maa,c, , Kui Xua,c, , Jijian Liana,d, Yan Longd
⁎ ⁎

a
State Key Laboratory of Hydraulic Engineering Simulation and Safety, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
b
Changjiang Survey, Planning, Design and Research Co., LTD., Wuhan, China
c
School of Civil Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
d
School of Water Conservancy and Hydroelectric Power, Hebei University of Engineering, Handan, China

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

This manuscript was handled by G. Syme, Flood risk increases with climate change and rapid urbanization, which urgently needs to improve the capacity
Editor-in-Chief of urban drainage systems. In the study, a staged optimization model considering climate change and hydro-
Keywords: logical model uncertainty (SOCU) was proposed for urban drainage system design. The SOCU model refers to the
Urban flood management construction of drainage system by stages instead of traditional implement-once plans, which was established
Drainage system design based on an integration of staged optimization policy, urban hydrological model, generalized likelihood un-
Staged optimization model certainty estimation (GLUE) method and chance-constrained programming (CCP) model. The staged optimiza-
Uncertainty analysis tion policy was employed to deal with the uncertainty of climate change. The GLUE method was adopted to
analyze the uncertainty of urban hydrological model established by PCSWMM. Considering the uncertainty from
urban hydrological simulation, the CCP model (one of the main methods of stochastic mathematical program-
ming) was used to deal with the uncertainty of the optimization model. Subsequently, a case study of the Haidian
Island of Hainan Province in China was used to demonstrate the proposed model. The result shows that the
optimal investment is 183 million Yuan with a pumping capacity of 28.3 m3/s for the first stage and 38.4 m3/s
for the next stage. The SOCU model is not only more flexible to adapt to climate change, but also is economically
efficient (10% lower than implement-once plans). The urban drainage system design obtained from the SOCU
model is more reliable and robust than traditional implement-once plans since the climate change and hydro-
logical model uncertainty are simultaneously taken into account. Furthermore, the investment increases from
166 million Yuan to 195 million Yuan when the flood constraint satisfaction probability increases from 0.75 to
0.95. Therefore, the model could provide richer decision-making information than traditional implement-once
plans and help decision makers seek a trade-off between system investment and acceptable flood damage. The
study outcomes provide a reliable optimization model for urban drainage design and may have profound im-
plications and contributions for urban flood management.

1. Introduction
Floods are serious threats to life and property around the world
(Barati et al., 2012; Lian et al., 2017). With climate change, flood risk
will increase in the future (Lian et al., 2013; Zheng et al., 2014; Jenkins
et al., 2017; He et al., 2018; He et al., 2019), which will cause extensive
economic losses and social problems as well as health issues worldwide.
In China, approximately 200 cities and towns suffer from urban
flooding hazards every year. According to statistical data, 62% of the
351 investigated cities have suffered from urban flooding during 2008
to 2010 (Xu et al., 2018d). For example, Typhoon Rammasun hit
Haikou of Hainan Province in July 2014, which claimed eight lives and
caused nearly 9 billion Yuan (1.30 billion dollar) economic losses due to
heavy daily rainfall. Similar disaster cases can also be found in many
other cities, such as Beijing (Xu et al., 2018a), Shanghai (Yin et al.,
2016a) and so on. The intensified flood hazards demand the urgent
needs to improve the capacity of urban drainage systems (Li et al.,
2015; Yu et al., 2017; Yazdi et al., 2016; Mohammadiun et al., 2018).
However, excessive drainage systems will increase investment, and
insufficient drainage systems will cause flooding losses. Therefore, it is
necessary to develop a cost-effective drainage design to achieve a better
trade-off between flood prevention goals and investment.
Optimization models have been widely adopted to tackle such trade-
off problems in drainage system design. Muleta and Boulos (2007)

⁎
Corresponding authors at: State Key Laboratory of Hydraulic Engineering Simulation and Safety, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
E-mail addresses: mac_tju@126.com (C. Ma), kui.xu@tju.edu.cn (K. Xu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.124959
Received 8 March 2020; Received in revised form 11 April 2020; Accepted 13 April 2020
Available online 15 April 2020
0022-1694/ © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
H. Xu, et al.
Fig. 1. Framework of SOCU model.
presented a multi-objective optimization model for urban drainage
system design to minimize design costs and maximize system perfor-
mance. Maharjan et al. (2009) described a staged cost optimization tool
based on the hydraulic performance (one dimension hydraulic model)
of the drainage system and to determine optimal intervention timings
and responses over the analysis period, but the uncertainties of hy-
draulic model and optimization model were not considered. Li et al.
(2015) developed a framework for the design of detention tank network
based on the storm water management model (SWMM) and a modified
particle swarm optimizer and Duan et al. (2016) further analyzed the
uncertainty and sensitivity of the framework. Cimorelli et al. (2016)
described a procedure integrating hydrologic model and genetic algo-
rithm for the evaluation of the optimal number, position, configuration,
and sizes of detention tanks in urban drainage networks to comply with
the local design requirements. Wang et al. (2017) presented a two-stage
optimization framework to find an optimal scheme for storage tanks
using SWMM. Mohammadiun et al. (2018) developed a stochastic fra-
mework to design/rehabilitate urban stormwater drainage systems
based on a resilient approach in order to design/rehabilitate of USDSs
considering the related probabilities of external and internal un-
expected conditions of loading. The above researches demonstrate that
the optimization model is an effective way for seeking cost-effective
solutions in urban drainage system design.
However, there are still some challenges to make the optimization
model more reliable. First, the effect of climate changes on urban
drainage design has been rarely considered in existing optimization
model. Climate change is expected to increase the intensity and fre-
quency of extreme rainfall (Frei et al., 1998; IPCC, 2014). It causes that
the design criteria of urban drainage systems based on statistical ana-
lysis of past rainfall events cannot meet the drainage requirements
under climate change conditions (Mailhot and Duchesne, 2010). Thus,
it is necessary to evaluate the effect of climate changes on drainage
system design. Second, hydrological models are widely used in the
optimization model, but the uncertainty of the hydrological model has
been rarely considered in drainage designs. The hydrological model
uncertainty usually originates from the uncertainty of input data (e.g.,
2
Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959
rainfall), hydrological parameters (e.g., sub-catchment characteristic
width, conduit roughness) and model structure. Extensive studies (e.g.,
Beven and Binley, 1992; Perrin et al., 2001; Fang and Ball, 2007; Sun
et al., 2014) have demonstrated that the uncertainty of hydrological
models would have a great impact on simulation output. Tackling these
uncertainties is important to help obtain reliable design solutions.
Therefore, it is meaningful to take account of the effect of climate
change and hydrological model uncertainty on urban drainage system
design.
To deal with the uncertainty of climate change, the staged optimi-
zation policy was employed to urban drainage system design, which
refers to the construction of drainage systems by stages (implemented
at regular time periods), rather than traditional implement-once plans
(Maharjan et al., 2009). For example, to meet drainage requirements in
2050, the first method is that all drainage facilities (e.g., pump stations
and storage tanks) are implemented in the first year (e.g., 2020) and the
drainage capacity is calculated by the design rainfall in 2050 under
climate change. The second method is that drainage facilities are im-
plemented in two stages. The first stage (2020–2035) is to determine
the drainage capacity by the design rainfall in 2035. Then, supple-
mental drainage facilities can be implemented and designed based on
historical rainfall before 2035 instead of 2020 in the second stage
(2035–2050), which could reduce the uncertainty caused by rainfall.
Obviously, the second method is not only more flexible as they allow
the decision makers to keep options open against uncertainties due to
the climate change, but also is economically efficient in terms of net
present value.
In this study, we proposed a staged optimization model considering
climate change and hydrological model uncertainty (SOCU) to flexibly
adapt to climate change and improve the reliability of urban drainage
systems. The model could help decision makers to better understand the
potential effects of climate change and hydrological model uncertainty
on drainage design and seek a trade-off between system investment and
acceptable flood damage. A case study of Haidian Island, Haikou was
used to demonstrate the proposed model. Section 2 describes the ma-
terials and methods, including the framework of SOCU model and the
H. Xu, et al. Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959

introduction of the case study. Section 3 presents the results and dis- likelihood values are higher than 0.9) and resampling according to the
cussion, with final conclusions presented in Section 4. likelihood values to obtain the marginal posterior distribution of un-
certain parameters.
2. Materials and methods
2.1.3. Step 3: Establishment of SOCU model
2.1. SOCU modelling framework
(1) Objective function
The framework of SOCU model was presented in Fig. 1. The steps
required to be carried out to accomplish the SOCU modelling were The design objective of SOCU model is to minimize the total cost
described in the following sections. including the investment cost of drainage facilities and flood damages.
The investment cost of drainage facilities mainly refer to the sum of
2.1.1. Step 1: Hydrological modelling data preparing and analysis of design investment cost in different time steps. For a staged optimization model
rainfall under climate change with m time steps, the investment cost can be defined as follows.
The required data of SOCU model includes basic data of hydro- m s
logical model, calibration data of the model and the projected design IC = (Ci × PVi ) × IDj
rainfall. The basic data of hydrological model includes elevation data, j=1 i=1 (2)
river data (e.g., river cross section and the distance between cross
where IC denotes the total present investment cost; PVi denotes the
sections), conduit data (e.g., junction depth, conduit size, etc.) and
capacity of the ith drainage facility (e.g., pump station, storage tank and
long-term rainfall observations. The calibration data of hydrological
so on); Ci denotes the unit cost of ith drainage facility; s denotes the
model refers to the observations of historical flood events (e.g., in-
number of drainage facility; IDj denotes the investment discount factor
undation depth and rainfall). The projected design rainfall under cli-
for each time step j, which can be calculated by following equation
mate change is used as input data for the urban hydrological model at
(Maharjan et al., 2009).
different time steps. Generally, future design rainfall can be obtained
from global (or regional) circulation model (Wilby et al., 1998; Tian 1
IDj =
1) × t + 2t
et al., 2016) and statistical analysis (Mailhot and Duchesne, 2010; (1 + r )(j (3)
Ahammed et al., 2014). In the study, design rainfall under climate
where △t denotes time duration of each time step; r denotes the discount
change was calculated by statistical analysis, and the detail steps are
rate.
described in Section 2.2.1.
In this study, the flood damage is computed in terms of expected
annual damage (Eq. (4)).
2.1.2. Step 2: Urban hydrological model uncertainty analysis
The urban hydrological model was established to evaluate the EAD = D (f ) df
capability of the drainage system of a city. Numerous commercial f =0 (4)
software models (e.g., MIKE software (DHI, 2011), SWMM (Rossman,
2015), PCSWMM (Paule-Mercado et al., 2017) and so on) are available where EAD is the expected annual damage, D(f) is the flood damage
to simulate the hydrological and hydraulic process of flooding. In this caused by the flood event with the occurrence frequency f.
study, a two-dimensional inundation model (PCSWMM) was employed. In order to simplify the calculations, the continuous integral of Eq.
PCSWMM developed by CHI, Canada was widely applied in the simu- (4) is written as a series of return periods (5-year, 10-year, 20-year and
lation of surface hydrological processes and drainage network flows 50-year) according to Maharjan et al. (2009) and Xu et al. (2018a).
(Denault et al., 2006; Meierdiercks et al., 2010; Ahiablame and Shakya, Thus, the flood damage function can be expressed as:
2016; Xu et al., 2018b). The dynamic wave method (Akbari and Barati, m p
2012; Barati et al., 2013) was used to calculate the hydraulic simulation Vi + 1 + Vi 1 1
FC = × Cf × × FDj
of the drainage conduit. j=1 i=1
2 Ri Ri + 1
j (5)
Uncertainty is an attribute of the hydrological model, which comes
from model structural errors, observation data errors, input errors, t 1
1
parameter errors, etc. Correctly evaluating the uncertainty of hydro- FDj =
i=0
(1 + r )(j 1) × t + i
(6)
logical model is of great significance in improving the accuracy of
urban flood simulation (Thorndahl et al., 2008). In the study, the where FC denotes the total present flood damage; m denotes the number
generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) method was ap- of time steps; p denotes the number of discretized return periods (5-
plied for uncertainty analysis, which has been widely applied in the year, 10-year, 20-year, 50-year); Ri denotes the ith return period of the
field of hydrology (Beven and Binley, 1992; Thorndahl et al., 2008; flood event; Vi denotes the inundation volume by the flood event with
Freni et al., 2009; Sun et al., 2014). The main steps of the GLUE method the return period of Ri; Cf denotes the flood unit cost; FDj denotes the
are as follows: (1) Determining value ranges of parameters and their flood discount factor for each time step j.
prior distributions (e.g., uniform distributions); (2) Randomly sampling Thus, the objective function (total cost function) can be described
parameter sets using a Monte Carlo (MC) technique and running the as:
hydrological model with the generated samples; (3) Defining the like- z = min(IC + FC ) (7)
lihood function and calculating the likelihood measures for each
parameter set. In the study, the likelihood function was defined as
(2) Chance-constrained programming model
follows (Thorndahl et al., 2008).
n
(Sk Ok )2 Considering the uncertainty from urban hydrological simulation,
L( ) = exp uncertain parameters (e.g., sub-catchment characteristic width w and
k=1
Ok2 (1)
conduit roughness n) are usually quantitatively represented as sto-
where L denotes the likelihood value; θ denotes the uncertain para- chastic distributions (He et al., 2006; Xie et al., 2011; Bastin et al.,
meter sets; Sk denotes the simulated inundation depth at the kth site; Ok 2013; Dong et al., 2015). Therefore, a chance-constrained programming
denotes the observed inundation depth at the kth site; n denotes the (CCP) model, one of the main methods of stochastic mathematical
number of observations. (4) Selecting valid parameter sets (e.g., programming, was employed to deal with the uncertainty of the

3
H. Xu, et al. Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959

Fig. 2. (a) Location of the study area; (b) the elevation map of the study area; (c) the design rainfall process in different time steps.

optimization model. The CCP model is applicable to solve the reliability where Pr{ } denotes the probability of satisfying the stochastic
problem of satisfying system constraints under uncertain conditions, constraint; Q ( ) denotes total surcharging volume calculated by the
which can provide information on the trade-off between the total in- hydrological model; ξ denotes the stochastic parameters (e.g., sub-
vestment and the risk of being flooded, which would be valuable to catchment characteristic width and conduit roughness) representing the
decision makers. A typical CCP model can be formulated as follows uncertainty associated with the hydrological model, which are posterior
(Charnes and Cooper, 1963): uncertain parameters derived by MC-based GLUE method; rp denotes
the design rainfall in different time steps under the climate change
min f (x , ) (8)
condition. γ denotes the acceptable surcharging volume (i.e., surcharge
Subject to: threshold); α denotes constraint satisfaction probability; BUj denotes
the maximum investment amount during jth time step; δi denotes the
h (x ) 0, i = 1, 2, ,k (9)
maximum capacity of the ith drainage facility. Pr{ } could be calculated
Pr{gj (x , ) 0} j, j = 1, 2, ,q as follows.
(10)

where f denotes the objective function; x denotes the decision variable; Nk

Pr{ } =
ξ denotes the stochastic parameter; h denotes the constraint function Nt (15)
without stochastic parameters; g denotes the constraint function with
stochastic parameters; α denotes constraint satisfaction probability; k where Nt denotes the number of calculation conditions of the hydro-
denotes the total number of deterministic constraints; q denotes the logical model. Nk denotes the number of calculation conditions which
total number of stochastic constraints. satisfy the constraint of Q ( ) < γ.
In this study, the SOCU model for urban drainage system design
could be written as follows based on the above objective function and
CCP model. 2.1.4. Step 4: Execution of SOCU model
A heuristic technique, genetic algorithm (GA), was employed to
m s
Min z = (Ci × PVi ) × IDj
solve the SOCU model, which is one of the most widely used techniques
j=1 i=1 for optimal stormwater management planning (Zhen et al., 2004;
m p Maharjan et al., 2009; Cimorelli et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2018a). The GA
Vi + 1 + Vi 1 1
+ × Cf × × FDj is a global search technique based on the procedure of initiation, se-
2 Ri Ri + 1
j=1 i=1 j (11) lection, crossover and mutation. In the study, the GA was programmed
in the MATLAB environment and real-number based chromosomes
Subject to:
were adopted. The parameters of the model were determined by trial
Pr{Q (PV , , rp) | , rp} (12) and error and the values recommended in relevant studies (Xu et al.,
2018a). A population size of 20, a generation size of 400, a crossover
s
probability of 0.7 and a mutation probability of 0.3 were set in the
(Ci × PVi ) BUj
optimization model.
i=1 j (13)

0 PVi i (14)

4
H. Xu, et al.
2.2. Case study
2.2.1. Study area and data
In order to test the proposed optimization scheme, Haidian Island
located in the northern part of Haikou in Hainan Province, China was
taken as a case study. The terrain of Haidian Island is relatively flat
(Fig. 2), and this area is one of regions most seriously and frequently
influenced by typhoons in China. Therefore, it is prone to floods due to
flat terrain and the effect of typhoons (Xu et al., 2018c; Xu et al., 2019).
The data used in this study include elevation data, river data, con-
duit data, rainfall data and observations of historical flood events.
Elevation data was accessed from the Institute of Geographic Sciences
and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (http://
www.resdc.cn/Default.aspx). River data and conduit data were pro-
vided by Haikou Municipal Water Authority. Observations of historical
storm events were obtained through field investigation during Typhoon
Rammasun on July 2014. Long-term rainfall observations were ob-
tained from the China Meteorological Administration Meteorological
Data Center (http://data.cma.cn/data/cdcdetail/dataCode/A.0012.
0001.html).
The design rainfall in different time steps was calculated by statis-
tical analysis method, since global (or regional) circulation models re-
quire lots of meteorological data and have great uncertainty. Technical
details of design rainfall analysis method can be found in Mailhot and
Duchesne (2010). This method assumes that the parameter of rainfall
distribution (e.g., generalized extreme value function) is linear inter-
polation according to the historical rainfall data. Firstly, the generalized
extreme values (GEV) function was used to describe rainfall distribution
with location parameter = 122.51, scale parameter = 46.78 and
shape parameter k = 0.115 in Haidian Island. The design rainfall (e.g.,
the return period of 5-year, 10-year, 20-year, 50-year) in 2012 was
calculated by the above GEV function, the temporal distribution of the
design rainfall was the same as that of the rainfall event on July 18,
2014 based on the severe flooding scenario. Then, considering climate
change, the location parameter is a linear function of time and the
increase rate b = 2.53 mm/year according to the historical rainfall
data, and the design rainfall in 2020 and 2030 can be calculated
(Table 1). Fig. 2c presents the design rainfall process with the return
period of 50 years in different time steps. The projected maximum value
of hour rainfall will increase about 13% (from 100 mm/h to 113 mm/h)
in consideration of climate change (in 2030), which will cause worse
flood conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to take account of the effect
of climate change on urban drainage system design.
2.2.2. Urban hydrological model uncertainty analysis based on GLUE
method
The PCSWMM model of Haidian Island has been described and ca-
librated in Xu et al. (2018b). The GLUE method was applied for un-
certainty analysis. Considering that the objective of this study is to
evaluate the effect of urban hydrological model uncertainty on drainage
design, sub-catchment characteristic width w and conduit roughness n
which are the most sensitive parameters for the hydrological model
were selected for uncertainty analysis based on the sensitivity test and
the recommendation of previous literatures (Zaghloul, 1983; Zhao
et al., 2009). Since the sub-catchment characteristic width varies in
Table 1
Design rainfall in different time steps and return periods.
Return period (year) Design rainfall (mm)
2012 2020 2030
5 199.111 219.351 244.651
10 242.694 262.934 288.234
20 288.192 308.432 333.732
50 352.971 373.211 398.511
5
Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959
different sub-catchments, the relative percentage change of w was
employed for uncertainty analysis. The uniform distributions were
adopted as prior distributions. Since prior ranges of parameter sets
should be broad enough to cover all possible parameter values and to
reflect substantial uncertainty in parameters (Sun et al., 2014), the
value ranges of w and n were set to 0.5 to 3.0 and 0.005 to 0.03, re-
spectively, based on the recommended ranges from relevant references
(Rossman, 2015). A total of 1000 parameter sets were sampled from
prior distributions using a Monte Carlo technique. The likelihood values
of parameter sets being higher than 0.9 were accepted as posterior
samples.
Fig. 3 illustrates the scatter plots of likelihood values and sub-
catchment characteristic width and conduit roughness. As shown in
Fig. 3, the likelihood values both have obvious peak values with the
increase of w and n, indicating that these parameters are significantly
sensitive to the hydrological model and have large influences on the
simulation output. These posterior samples can be used to calculate the
probability of satisfying the stochastic constraint in Eq. (12).
2.2.3. Model setup
According to the guidelines of urban drainage design released by
Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of People’s
Republic of China (http://www.mohurd.gov.cn/wjfb/201306/t20
130627_214142.html), the drainage system in Haidian Island was de-
signed to handle a 50-year rainfall event before 2030 and the design
base year was set to 2012 in this study. For convenience of metho-
dology demonstration, the drainage facility was implemented in two
stages, including short-term (2020) and long-term (2030) construction.
In our previous work (Lian et al., 2017), pumping facilities were ef-
fective and economical choices in Haidian Island due to the flat terrain
(Fig. 2b) and high tide blocking. Therefore, pumping facilities were
adopted in Haidian Island. The locations of the pumping facilities were
selected in the highest flood risk areas based on our previous work (Xu
et al., 2018b). Additionally, in Haidian Island, the Dongpo lake (i.e.,
storage A in Fig. 6b) and Qiuhai lake (i.e., storage B in Fig. 6b) have
been planned as storage projects by Haikou Municipal Water Authority,
and the storage capacity of the Dongpo lake and Qiuhai lake is
126,000 m3 and 389,000 m3, respectively (Xu et al., 2018b).
In the optimization model, a variety of parameters need to be set as
model inputs, including the unit cost of the pumping facility C, the
discount rate r, the flood unit cost Cf, the acceptable surcharging vo-
lume γ, constraint satisfaction probability α, the maximum investment
amount BU1 and BU2, the maximum capacity of the pumping facility δ.
These parameters were determined based on the actual circumstances
of the study area, field investigation and recommendations from re-
levant references. (1) C and r were set to 3 million Yuan and 0.08,
respectively, based on recommendations from relevant references (Lian
et al., 2017; Xu et al., 2018a); (2) Cf was set to 258 Yuan surveyed by
two flooding events in the study area in October 2010 and July 2014;
(3) γ and δ were initially set as 600,000 m3 and 80 m3/s, respectively,
based on trial and error; (4) α was initially set as 0.9; (5) BU1 and BU2
were assumed to 0.8 billion Yuan and 1.0 billion Yuan, respectively,
according to the local financial investment plan. The sensitivity of
above parameters was also explored in this study.
In the optimization model, the submerged volume Vi calculated by
PCSWMM changes with the capacity of drainage systems (i.e., the de-
cision variable of the optimization model). To facilitate the connection
between the optimization model and PCSWMM model, following
methods can be adopted. (1) Before running the optimization model,
the relationship between submerged volume and the capacity of drai-
nage systems can be fitted by a regression equation through a large
number of hydraulic simulations. Then, the fitted equation is sub-
stituted into the optimization model. (2) In each solution evaluated by
GA, the hydraulic behavior of the drainage system is simulated by the
PCSWMM model, and then extract the necessary information (e.g.,
submerged volume) from PCSWMM model to the optimization model.
H. Xu, et al. Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959

Fig. 3. Scatter plots of likelihood values and hydrological model parameters (a) w; (b) n.

Table 2
Fitted equations between submerged volume V and the capacity of drainage systems PV.
Year Return period of design rainfall Fitted equations between V (104 m3) and PV (m3/s)

2020 5-year V= 0.09 × PV + 25.36

10-year V= 0.0006 × PV + 29.01
20-year V= 58.19 + 5.05 × PV 0.99 × PV × ln (PV ) + 0.00003 × PV 3 + 258.27/PV 0.5
50-year V= 11.22 + 0.67 × PV + 0.00003 × PV 3 + 1747.83/PV 12827.61/PV 2

2030 5-year V= 0.0001 × PV + 26.03

10-year V= 0.0005 × PV + 33.71
20-year V= 8.49 + 3.41 × PV 0.68 × PV × ln (PV ) + 0.00002 × PV 3 + 517.05/PV
50-year V = 570.46 31.69 × PV + 6.39 × PV × ln (PV ) 0.0002 × PV 3 1137.15/PV 0.5

Since the computation time of PCSWMM model is relatively long (e.g.,

the average computation time is about 5 h on a PC with single CPUi5-
3.2 GHz configuration), the first way was adopted in this study to ef-
ficiently achieve the numerical optimization process under uncertainty
conditions. The fitted equations between submerged volume V and the
capacity of drainage systems PV are described in Table 2.

3. Results and discussions

3.1. Optimal solution of SOCU model

A number of different trials (with different random seeds) are used

to ascertain the robustness of the optimization model. The “10 trials” in
Fig. 4 are the representative of different trials in order to describe op-
timal pumping capacity and corresponding total present cost. Fig. 4
shows that the total present costs of the optimization model are all
located at around 185 million Yuan. The optimal total present cost is
183 million Yuan (trial 6) with the flood cost of 78 million Yuan (43%)
and the investment cost of 105 million Yuan (57%) shown in Fig. 5. The
Fig. 4. Pumping capacity of trials 1 to 10 (Left axis) and corresponding total
optimal solution shows that a pumping capacity of 28.3 m3/s should be
present cost (Right axis).
constructed in 2012–2020 and then extended to 38.4 m3/s in
2020–2030. The pumping capacity of 28.3 m3/s and 38.4 m3/s refer to
the sum of the capacities of pump stations C-G in Fig. 6b. The location As shown in Fig. 5, if drainage facilities were completely im-
and the distribution ratio of the pumping capacity of pump stations C-G plemented in the first year to handle a 50-year rainfall event in 2030
were determined based on our previous work (Xu et al., 2018b). As (i.e., implement-once design), the total present cost (i.e., investment
shown in Fig. 6b, inundation depths are extremely low after im- cost) was more than 200 million Yuan, which was much higher than
plementing the above new drainage facilities when compared with that of SOCU model since the time value of money was taken into ac-
those in Fig. 6a. Thus, the new drainage system for this area will be able count. Thus, the staged design is a significant financial saving, and this
to handle a 50-year rainfall event in 2030. is only one of advantages of this approach. The staged design can also

6
H. Xu, et al.
Fig. 5. Comparison between staged design and implement-once design (trial 6).
make the decision making more flexible as it is possible for decision
makers to revise some decisions made today, according to more suffi-
cient information on a future date. For example, for a project with
50 year life-span (e.g., from 2020 year to 2070 year), the drainage fa-
cilities which are adequate at the beginning of the project may not be
able to meet the drainage requirements at 2050 year because of climate
change. Hence, supplemental drainage facilities (e.g., pumps and sto-
rage tanks) can be implemented and designed based on historical
rainfall before 2050 year instead of 2020 year, which could reduce the
uncertainty caused by rainfall.
3.2. Influence of climate change and hydrological model uncertainty
In order to improve the reliability of urban drainage design, the
climate change and hydrological model uncertainty were taken into
account in the optimization model for urban drainage designs. As we all
known, climate change has an influence on rainfall and the investment
of drainage system, but the quantification of the influence is a question
worth exploring. Fig. 7 illustrates the comparison of the total present
cost under the climate change and stationarity scenario. The total
present cost would increase from 121 million Yuan to 127 million Yuan
under stationarity scenario and from 166 million Yuan to 195 million
Yuan under climate change scenario, respectively, when the constraint
satisfaction probability increases from 0.75 to 0.95. The total present
cost under climate change scenario would increase on average 1.4 times
than that under present scenario. It reveals that climate change has a
respectively significant influence on the investment of drainage system.
Furthermore, the solutions under stationarity scenario would inevitably
lead to the flood risk under future climate change conditions. When the
stationarity solutions are implemented but with increased rainfall due
to climate change, the surcharging probabilities (i.e., the total sur-
charging volume exceeds the corresponding threshold) were all higher
than 50% as shown in Fig. 7 (grey bar), which demonstrates that the
solution with consideration of climate change is more reliable.
Fig. 8 shows the influence of hydrological model uncertainty on the
drainage design. The total present cost of the deterministic optimization
model (i.e., without considering hydrological model uncertainty) is 147
million Yuan, which is lower than the result of SOCU model (183
million Yuan). The deterministic solutions would lead to flooding
problems due to the hydrological model uncertainty and the surchar-
ging probability is 52%, which indicates that although the deterministic
model saves some investment cost, the model results lack sufficient
reliability.
7
Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959
3.3. Influence of constraint satisfaction probability and surcharge threshold
The SOCU model not only has the above-mentioned reliability, but
also could provide richer decision-making information for decision
makers. Fig. 9 presents the relationship between constraint satisfaction
probability (i.e., system safety probability) and total system investment.
Obviously, the total present cost would increase with an increase of the
constraint satisfaction probability. When the constraint satisfaction
probability increases from 0.75 to 0.95, the total present cost increases
from 166 million Yuan to 195 million Yuan, which could help decision
makers conduct a trade-off analysis between total system investment
and the flooding risk. For instance, when the constraint satisfaction
probability increases from 0.75 to 0.85, the total present cost increases
slowly in Haidian Island. However, the total present cost increases
obviously when the constraint satisfaction probability increases from
0.85 to 0.95. Therefore, in order to achieve a high level of system safety
and save the investment, the constraint satisfaction probability of 0.85
is recommended.
Similar decision-making information for decision makers can also be
given in Fig. 10. Fig. 10 shows the relationship between surcharge
threshold (i.e., the threshold of total surcharge volume) and system
investment. The maximum surcharge volume was taken as 680000 m3
by the high flood risk area described in Xu et al. (2018b) and the al-
lowed maximum submerged depth (i.e., 0.3 m in Yin et al., 2016a).
With the increase of the surcharge threshold, the total present cost
decreases from 183 million to 147 million Yuan, which was mainly due
to the decrease of drainage facility investment cost. Furthermore, the
total present cost increase greatly (from 151 million Yuan to 183 mil-
lion Yuan) when the surcharge threshold decrease from 640,000 m3 to
600,000 m3, whereas the total present cost only increase slightly (from
147 million Yuan to 151 million Yuan) with the decrease of the sur-
charge threshold from 680,000 m3 to 640,000 m3. It indicates that it is
more economical to set the surcharge threshold as 640,000 m3 for the
Haidian Island.
3.4. SOCU model parameter sensitivity analysis
In the optimization model, some parameters were initially de-
termined according to the actual circumstances of the study area, field
investigation and recommendations from relevant references. When
these parameters change, it may have an influence on the optimization
cost function. Thus, the sensitivity analysis of these parameters in-
cluding flood unit cost, pump unit cost, the discount rate and rainfall
increase rate needs to be carried out. As shown in Fig. 11, the total
present cost would increase linearly with the increase of the flood unit
cost and the pump unit cost. When the discount rate increases from 0.02
to 0.12, the total present cost shows a logarithmic decrease from 364
million Yuan to 128 million Yuan. With the increase in rainfall increase
rate, an exponential increase of the total present cost is observed.
Through the fitted exponential equation, decision makers could eval-
uate the climate change effects on the drainage system investment. For
instance, the total present cost increases 80 million Yuan when the
rainfall increase rate is 10%. Furthermore, the total present costs would
change with a specific trend in terms of the data parameters changing,
which illustrates that the trends of the model’s features are not affected
by the assumptions.
3.5. Advantages and deficiencies of the proposed model
In the study, a staged optimization model considering climate
change and hydrological model uncertainty was proposed for urban
drainage design. In addition to the advantages mentioned above, the
proposed model has the potential to be widely applied for other types of
drainage designs (e.g., storage tanks design, drainage conduit size de-
sign and so on). However, the proposed approach also has certain de-
ficiencies. First, climate change and rapid urbanization both have an
H. Xu, et al. Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959

Fig. 6. Comparison of inundation depth (a) without new drainage facilities; (b) with new drainage facilities.

effect on rainfall and land surface. In this study, underlying surface stages and pumping facility were analyzed in this study. More stages
change was not considered in urban hydrological model due to data and more types of drainage facilities (e.g., increase drainage conduit
constraints, and the uncertainty of design rainfall in the climate change size, improve flow capacity of rivers and so on) are required to be ex-
estimates has not been taken into account. This is also our future work plored in the future work.
when we use the staged optimization model for other areas. Second, the
limitation of indirect economic data in the study area restricts the
4. Conclusions
quantification of flood damages. The flooding cost includes economic
losses and non-economic losses. The economic losses mainly refer to
The optimization model is an effective way for seeking cost-effective
financial cost. The non-economic losses include huge social, environ-
solutions in urban drainage system design. However, the previous op-
mental costs and sometimes even loss of life. Referring to Maharjan
timization models rarely take climate change and urban hydrological
et al. (2009) and Xu et al. (2018a), the financial cost was taken into
model uncertainty into consideration. In this study, a more reliable
account since indirect economic losses are difficult to quantify. A future
optimization model (i.e., SOCU model) for urban drainage design was
research work would be to improve the accurate quantification of the
proposed based on an integration of staged optimization policy, urban
flood damage. Finally, for convenience of methodology demonstration
hydrological model, MC-based GLUE method, CCP model and heuristic
and considering the actual circumstances of the study area, only two
algorithm. First, the required data of the SOCU model were collected

8
H. Xu, et al. Journal of Hydrology 587 (2020) 124959

Fig. 10. The relationship between surcharge threshold and system investment.

and the projected design rainfall in future conditions was analyzed as

Fig. 7. Comparison of total present cost under climate change and stationarity
input data for urban hydrological model in different time steps. Second,
scenario.
a two-dimensional inundation model of the study area was established
by PCSMM and the uncertainty of the hydrological model was in-
vestigated based on GLUE method. Third, considering the uncertainty
from urban hydrological simulation as well as the effects of climate
change on designed rainfall, a CCP model was employed to deal with
uncertainty of the optimization model. The posterior samples of hy-
drological parameters obtained from GLUE method were used to cal-
culate the probability of satisfying the stochastic constraint. Finally,
genetic algorithm was adopted to solve the SOCU model due to its easy
implementation, simplicity and efficiency in application. Subsequently,
a case study of the Haidian Island was used to demonstrate the pro-
posed model. The result shows that the SOCU model not only has more
flexibility to adapt to climate change, but also is a significant financial
saving (10% lower than traditional implement-once plan). Since the
climate change and hydrological model uncertainty were simulta-
neously considered, the urban drainage system design obtained from
the SOCU model would be more reliable and robust. Furthermore, the
Fig. 8. Comparison between SOCU model and deterministic optimization proposed model could help decision makers better understand the po-
model.
tential effects of climate change and hydrological model uncertainty on
drainage design and seek a trade-off between system investment and
acceptable flood damage. The study outcomes may have profound im-
plications and contributions for urban flood management.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hongshi Xu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing -

original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization. Chao Ma:
Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Writing - review & editing,
Funding acquisition. : . Kui Xu: Conceptualization, Software, Writing -
original draft, Writing - review & editing. Jijian Lian: Validation,
Resources, Funding acquisition. Yan Long: Visualization, Writing -
review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial

Fig. 9. The relationship between constraint satisfaction probability and system
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
investment.
ence the work reported in this paper.

9
H. Xu, et al.
Fig. 11. The sensitivity analysis of (a) flood unit cost; (b) pump unit cost; (c) discount rate; (d) rainfall increase rate.
Acknowledgements
The research was supported by National Key Research and
Development Program of China (2018YFC1508005), National Natural
Science Foundation of China (51679159, 51722906), the Science Fund
for Creative Research Groups of the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (51621092) and the Program of Introducing
Talents of Discipline to Universities (B14012). Additionally, our cordial
gratitude should be extended to the editor and three anonymous re-
viewers for their professional and pertinent comments and suggestions,
which are greatly helpful for further quality improvement of this
manuscript.
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