Stormwater management for civil engineering

Stormwater management is a critical function of any municipality. Typically managed by public works departments, stormwater operations are focused on how infrastructure conveys water in a precipitation event, with the ultimate goal of optimizing drainage solutions to prevent flooding and other dangerous hazards. 

While the public sector is largely responsible for stormwater infrastructure, civil engineering firms are often contracted to advise on its development, improvement, and maintenance. Private sector civil engineers bring new expertise to stormwater management, drawing upon experience from other municipal clients to develop innovative solutions for a variety of infrastructure projects. 

At Ecopia AI, we work closely with stormwater professionals from both the public and private sectors to provide high-precision geospatial data for many use cases in stormwater management. Most commonly, we see civil engineers contracted by municipalities to support stormwater utility fee assessment, infrastructure maintenance and development, flood modeling, and hazard mitigation.

Stormwater utility fee assessment

Stormwater utility fees (SUFs) are often leveraged by municipalities to fund infrastructure projects. There are a few different types of SUFs ranging from flat fees to individual property rates determined by how much stormwater it contributes to the drainage system. Many times, public works departments hire civil engineering firms to help them establish the right SUF program for their community, or even perform data analysis to inform ongoing SUF adjustments.

For example, civil engineers specializing in stormwater management can work with municipal governments to identify which fee structure makes the most sense for their program. This can be based on the mix of residential and commercial properties throughout the municipality, as well as top priorities for stormwater infrastructure improvements. Civil engineers can not only guide public sector stormwater professionals throughout this process, but also analyze geospatial data to quantify how much in SUFs a property should pay based on its land cover. 

Infrastructure maintenance and development

Similarly, civil engineers work with municipal stormwater teams to assess current drainage infrastructure, design improvements, and plan necessary maintenance. As communities evolve and infrastructure ages, municipalities rely on the expertise of civil engineers to ensure drainage systems are resilient to a changing climate, population growth and migration, property development, and other dynamic conditions of society.

In many communities, civil engineers also work to modernize older infrastructure to meet new regulations or guidelines. Whether advising municipalities on meeting MS4 requirements or updating the materials of drainage pipes, civil engineers provide valuable services to stormwater teams looking to effectively manage their infrastructure.

Flood modeling and hazard mitigation

While civil engineers are integral to ensuring stormwater management systems prevent flooding from precipitation events, they also consult with the public sector on hazard mitigation efforts if such an event were to occur. Flood modeling is important not only for predicting and mitigating these events, but also for informing larger stormwater management strategies to ensure the right infrastructure is in place for prevention.

To that end, civil engineers with expertise in hydrology are often contracted by municipalities to develop flood models that take land cover, infrastructure, elevation, and other environmental characteristics into account. These flood models are used to simulate what would happen in certain stormwater scenarios, such as which areas would be most susceptible to flooding and how infrastructure would hold up. Civil engineers can then work with their municipal clients to improve infrastructure, educate the population most at risk, and develop other mitigation tactics.

Geospatial data to support stormwater projects in civil engineering

Data analysis is an essential component of all three of these stormwater management applications. As civil engineers work alongside their public sector clients on various stormwater initiatives, they require a comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date understanding of both the natural and manmade environments in order to analyze conditions, make recommendations for improvements, and manage projects. 

That’s where geospatial data comes in. With high-precision maps that truly reflect real-world conditions, civil engineers can perform cutting-edge analytics that inform stormwater management strategies for their municipal clients without having to physically assess a community’s land cover conditions. While many types of geospatial data can be helpful for stormwater analysis, the three most commonly used are impervious surfaces, land cover, and elevation. 

Impervious surface data

One of the most important datasets for civil engineers working on stormwater client projects is impervious surface data. This data accurately delineates the areas of land cover where no water can be absorbed, leading to increased runoff that can cause flooding or overwhelmed drainage systems. Common examples of impervious surface data layers include buildings, roads, pavement, sidewalk, swimming pools, artificial sports grounds, and similar features. As communities grow and develop, more impervious surfaces are typically constructed, placing an increased strain on stormwater infrastructure that civil engineers must analyze to serve their clients.

Land cover data

While impervious surfaces usually place the most stress on stormwater systems, it’s also helpful for civil engineers to factor natural land cover into their assessments. This not only can indicate a community’s overall resilience to increasingly intense and frequent precipitation events, but also how absorbent features reduce the amount of stormwater entering drainage systems. With data layers denoting grass, shrubs, forests, bareland, and other pervious features, civil engineers can build more accurate flood models to inform hazard risk assessment, create infrastructure requirements, and understand a community’s mix of land cover.

Elevation data

When creating flood models, it can also be helpful for civil engineers to have elevation data. Elevation data like digital terrain models (DTMs) or digital surface models (DSMs) can be layered with impervious surface and natural land cover data to show how gravity will impact stormwater runoff in a precipitation event. With this combined information, hydrologists can calculate runoff coefficients and more accurately model how much water will flow across a surface, and at what speed. While DTMs represent the elevation of natural features, DSMs also include the elevation of the built environment, which is increasingly important as municipalities adapt stormwater infrastructure to evolving community landscapes.

Leveraging AI to scale stormwater projects in civil engineering

Geospatial data is a necessary resource for civil engineers working with municipalities and public works departments on stormwater infrastructure. However, traditional data creation methods required civil engineers to devote billable project hours to tedious manual digitization rather than strategic analysis and consulting - what their clients hired them to do in the first place. To put it in perspective, manually mapping all of the impervious surfaces across a US municipality can often take upwards of 12-18 months, by which time the community has already developed and changed, rendering the data stale.

Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), civil engineers can now efficiently map all of the land cover features across a municipality in just a matter of weeks, all with the accuracy of a trained GIS professional. This accelerated timeline means civil engineers can scale client projects by accessing fresh, high-precision data without manual digitization, enabling them to fast-track project objectives and devote billable hours to what really matters: analysis and strategic advising. 

At Ecopia AI, we work with civil engineers every day to scale data creation without sacrificing quality. Our AI-based mapping systems are developed by geomatics experts to rapidly extract vector data from geospatial imagery with the same level of precision you would expect from a human manually tracing features. Ecopia data then goes through a rigorous human-led quality control process to ensure it meets client requirements before being delivered to civil engineers. Thanks to this process, civil engineers can source the data they need for a strategic consulting engagement in just a few weeks, allowing them to take on more projects without sacrificing resources to manual digitization.

Client spotlight: Stantec

Among the many civil engineering firms Ecopia works with around the world is Stantec, a community design firm specializing in a variety of disciplines including stormwater management. Ecopia has partnered with Stantec on various municipal stormwater projects across the United States to provide high-precision geospatial data at scale. Ecopia’s AI-based mapping enables Stantec civil engineers to efficiently and accurately map their project areas without manually digitizing features, instead affording them more time to analyze critical geospatial information and implement strategic stormwater management strategies for their clients.

To learn more about how Ecopia can scale stormwater geospatial data creation for civil engineering, get in touch with our team.