egration we have to do so we can have an integrated system where each person contributes his or her own component."
In 2013, Goodall volunteered as a mentor at a local middle school, where he guided students through designing a city of the future and "specifically think about how that city would handle its storm water," he says. "We discussed the general problems caused by storm water," which is runoff caused by heavy rain storms, "falling on impervious surfaces such as roads, roofs and parking lots.
"Because this rain does not infiltrate into the soil, it can cause problems such as flooding or erosion of river beds," he adds. "We talked about the ways engineers handle storm water so that it does not cause these problems, as well as how the philosophy for handling storm water runoff has changed over the years."
While many urban storm water systems were designed in the past simply to remove rain water from a city as quickly as possible--for example, by using large concrete channels--the focus has changed in recent years. Many cities now employ new practices, such as using pervious surfaces for roads or lots, or capturing rainfall in ponds or rain gardens distributed across the city, allowing water to slowly infiltrate into the soil.
"Storm water is something that most people spend very little time thinking about and these students were no different," he says. "But as they began to think about the problem and the challenge of not only solving the problem, but doing it in a sustainable way, they were hooked. You could see their minds go as they tried to come up with solutions to the problem, and that was fun."-- Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation
Researchers studied North Carolina's Neuse River basin using an integrated modeling approach.
Credit and Larger Version
University South Carolina Research Foundation