Textbooks on SWMM Modeling

Hello SWMM users

I am a teaching assistant in a Urban Water Systems course which uses the SWMM program for modelling. I recently picked up the new manuals produced by Dr. James and found them excellent. They are a joy to use in comparison with the old SWMM manual and are full of examples.

The students and faculty whom I lent the books to, also mentioned how easy the manuals were to use and understand. The department is now going to buy a number of these new manuals to replace the old SWMM manuals.

Patrick Grover
University of Waterloo

Dear Chris,

Up to as far as I have read, I find Dr. James's manual on SWMM very good. It is easy to understand and it shows you how SWMM works. So I do recommend getting it if you want to learn more about SWMM. As for flow distribution, the way I did is to distribute the flow from a flow monitor to the subcatchment areas in its tributary area based on area. I find that works pretty good. So you can give that a try.

I hope this helps.
Joseph

Hello SWMMers-

I have used SWMM a little for very basic, small projects, none dealing with water quality. I would like to use SWMM more, especially for storm and sanitary sewer modelling, but I need to get a better handle on the basics of the model, ideally, reviewing example models to see how others have approached such items as using monitored flows to calibrate a model, distributing monitored flows among upstream nodes, etc.

I have the USEPA manuals for SWMM 4 and EXTRAN 4, but I find it difficult to get the information I need out of them. Does anyone know of any other texts or manuals that:

1) provide information on SWMM in a more condensed manner, or
2) are geared more toward the application of SWMM, hopefully with examples?

Thanks to all for your input.
Chris Hauser

Hi

I recently produced a handy wire-bound 2-volume version of the manuals, completely re-organised and very much edited logically, grammatically and in language to conform to a PC environment and along undergraduate lines, with additional worked exercises and they are comprehensively indexed. My students use them extensively; perhaps some users on this list could advise you independently. Anyway I do find them very much better for instruction. BTW, they are priced the same as Wayne's documentation in order not to compete with him. For more info, email: Info@chi.on.ca

Bill James

Responding to those who have recently asked about textbooks/references on SWMM and urban runoff modeling:

As a fairly new modeler, I have found the book "Urban Stormwater Modeling and Simulation" by Stephan Nix to be quite helpful. It contains a good readable discussion of the theory and practice of urban runoff modeling in general, and SWMM is one of the models that is focused on.

Aaron Volkening
Earth Tech, Inc.

Chris:

Pardon me if you saw some of this in an earlier posting.

I haven't found a textbook that's a better reference on SWMM and urban drainage than the 1988 manual. Textbooks give you the background in hydrology and hydraulics you need, but don't do much for developing model input files and interpreting the output. They also aren't much help in the all important area of making enough assumptions to model something without any data!

One other H&H book I've found indispensable is Maidment's "Handbook of Hydrology". I joined the McGraw-Hill CE book club to get this one for less than $125.

My advice on learning SWMM is to start with RUNOFF on a small watershed of 5 or 6 catchments. Once you've been back and forth with your input files and the manual you should be able to understand obscure topics like depression storage and subcatchment width, and better, to get a feel for how their variations affect the flows from your watershed.

Once you're done with RUNOFF, build an EXTRAN or TRANSPORT file for the drainage network and go on from there.

Hope this helps
Bill