Multiobjective Evolutionary Approach to Rehabilitation of Urban Drainage Systems

Urban flooding has become a very important and growing issue around the world. In order to maintain an acceptable performance of urban drainage systems, early rehabilitation plans must be developed and implemented. The allocation of funds to support rehabilitation works should be in a certain sense “optimal” in providing value for money. However, this is a highly demanding and not easily achievable task due to the multidimensional nature of the rehabilitation process, especially taking into account conflicting interests. In this respect, multiobjective optimization using hydrodynamic urban drainage models appears to be promising and more reliable than the traditional engineering approaches. Such optimization is used in this paper to evaluate urban drainage rehabilitation scenarios contrasting investment against flood damages. A small-scale rehabilitation problem is posed and solved. The approach has demonstrated the potential use and combination of multiobjective optimization and hydrodynamic models to analyze urban drainage rehabilitation, providing valuable information for decision makers.