Urban drainage models - making uncertainty analysis simple

There is increasing awareness about uncertainties in modelling of urban drainage systems and, as such, many new methods for uncertainty analyses have been developed. Despite this, all available methods have limitations which restrict their widespread application among practitioners. Here, a modified Monte-Carlo based method is presented which reduces the subjectivity inherent in typical uncertainty approaches (e.g. cut-off thresholds), while using tangible concepts and providing practical outcomes for practitioners.

The method compares the model’s uncertainty bands to the uncertainty inherent in each measured/observed datapoint; an issue which is commonly overlook in the uncertainty analysis of urban drainage models. This comparison allows the user to intuitively estimate the optimum number of simulations required to conduct uncertainty analyses.

The output of the method includes parameter probability distributions (often used for sensitivity analyses) and prediction intervals. To demonstrate the new method, it is applied to a conceptual rainfall-runoff model using a dataset collected from Melbourne, Australia.