Assessing drainage conditions of roadside channels and adjacent lands at the neighborhood level is important for ensuring effective drainage of stormwater in residential areas. The evaluation information can help government agencies and property owners to develop maintenance plans and mitigation strategies to reduce the risk of pluvial floods. The objective of this study is to identify challenges and opportunities in implementing mobile light detection and ranging (lidar) for assessing drainage conditions at the neighborhood level. A new mobile lidar-based method for evaluating drainage systems in residential areas was tested in two communities in Harris and Aransas Counties in Texas, with a total road length of 4.67 centerline miles (approximately 9 miles of roadside channels). Using this method, six attributes of channel conditions and two attributes of flow conditions were evaluated. The results were compared between and within communities. The comparisons show that the drainage system in the Harris County community has better conditions than that in the Aransas County community. The results of these case studies demonstrate that this mobile lidar-based drainage evaluation method can be effectively applied at the neighborhood scale. Additionally, the paper provides potential maintenance corrective actions. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for improving the data collection process, the data analysis, and processing algorithms. Although the proposed processing methods for lidar data may be improved further, the case studies showed that lidar data can be used to evaluate drainage systems and provide meaningful information to government agencies and property owners.      

Use of Mobile Lidar in Assessing Drainage Conditions in Residential Areas with Roadside Channels: Case Studies

ASCE International Conference on Transportation & Development (ICTD 2021) is organized by the Transportation & Development Institute (T&DI) of ASCE to facilitate the exchange of information, knowledge, and best practices among transportation and development practitioners and researchers, public infrastructure owners, policymakers, government engineers and planners, operations managers, and leading academics from around the world.

Paper Proceedings: https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784483534 | https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784483541

Conference DOI: https://doi.org/10.26226/m.631784867747920012e73503