Automatic Runoff Coefficient Estimation for Urban Drainage Modeling Using Google Maps Information and Fuzzy Classification.

In the process of designing sewer and stormwater systems, there are numerousrepetitive tasks that require not only substantial time for their execution but alsothey are very much dependent on judgment and experience of the designengineer. Such examples are catchment delineation, identification of runoffcoefficients and definition of dry and wet weather flow parameters. Dealing withsuch aspects in real-life projects can sometimes be very time consuming andconsequently the time left for the design work may be limited. The present paperprovides contribution in this direction by evaluating the possibility for using highresolutionsatellite imagery data from Google Maps in an automated fashion. Thepaper describes an automated method which is based on fuzzy set classificationand it demonstrates how it can be used to extract the runoff coefficients fromsatellite images. A Graphical user interface was using Delphi code environment.The code was tested on a case study in the city of Birmingham (UK) and theresults are promising.