CME.05 – Kimberly North Detention System Optimization
Team Members Heading link
- Jorge Blanco
- Kristine Gonzalez
- Ahmed Khan
- Edward Nersisyan
- Karen Portillo Chavarria
- Conner Ray
Project Description Heading link
During the week of May 10, 2020, a record-breaking 8.3 inches of rain made history in Chicago as the city’s wettest May ever. This incredible series of storms raised the Chicago River to a higher elevation than Lake Michigan, forcing the MWRD to reverse its flow to minimize overbank flooding. Extreme flooding was ubiquitous across a Chicagoland who designed its drainage network to mitigate stormwater for a rainfall dataset they gathered decades prior. Among those struck by this storm was the Village of Carol Stream. With global warming increasing the likelihood of similar severe storm events each year, this has led community members to advocate for the redesign of their drainage system. However, expanding stormwater catchments is expensive and not always possible in urban settings. What can be done to address this issue? In this project, our team explores a modern problem in our aging infrastructure and suggests a solution that combines classical civil engineering and cloud-based smart-sensor technology. The two detention ponds at 245 and 285 E Fullerton Ave in Carol Stream, Illinois, represent our case study issue. They are not adequately designed to accommodate the volume of upstream runoff. During moderate to heavy rainfall, these ponds flood the Fullerton Ave access drive and overtop the emergency spillway near the railroad tracks. Among the 80 contributing acres of upstream tributary are a group of detention ponds that attenuate runoff for varying periods before it reaches the subject ponds. Our team predicts that by making all pond outfalls “smart” by installing variable flow restrictors connected on a cloud server, this drainage network can be streamlined to handle its flow demands similarly to an optimized roadway intersection. This design project tests the prediction by modifying the existing watershed model and developing the ‘smart’ restrictor logic within EPA SWMM.