Assessment of the EPA-SWMM Software for Urban Stormwter Management Manual (MSMA) Requirement

Nowadays, progressive development from agriculture to an industrialized economy has
grown rapidly not only in Malaysia but also in many countries all over the world.
However, inadequate controlled development has resulted to the environmental changes
and problems such as flash flood in both urban and rural areas in Malaysia. The case
study of this project is located at the New Academic Complex of Universiti Teknologi
PETRONAS (UTP). The purposes of this project are to identify and investigate the
assessment of the EPA Storm Water Management Model (EPA SWMM) for urban
stormwater management in order to meet the MSMA requirement and make a
comparison with manual calculation in term of the physical quantity. Therefore, this
study is conducted with the aid of EPA SWMM computer model in order to determine
the peak runoff for post-development area. Using EPA SWMM gave satisfying results
and it is suitable for simulating post-development area. However, EPA SWMM has used
different approaches of design analysis compared to MSMA manual practices. In EPA
SWMM, it only considers the runoff for post-development area but inMSMA practices,
it being considered the runoff in both, the pre-development area and post-development
area. Besides that, MSMA manual proposed Rational Method to compute peak runoff.
Rational Method does not produce Hydrograph but in EPA SWMM, it generates the
Hydrograph to set the peak runoff. Thus, some of modifications are needed in EPA
SWMM in order to fulfill MSMA requirement. All in all, the computer models are very
important tools to help engineers perform their task faster, cheaper and better way.