Geographic information systems applied to urban storm drainage management: The Valencia case study

The existence of huge amounts of information make the management of an Urban Storm Drainage Systems extremely difficult using traditional methods. In addition, an important percentage of the local council budget is spent on maintaining the present drainage network and on increasing its size in the new urbanized areas. Therefore, an advanced management system is necessary, not only to "digest" the enormous amount of data available, but also to help to set forth future investment policies. The aim of this paper is to present SIRA, an advanced management system using GIS for urban drainage analysis. At present, SIRA is being partially operational in the city of Valencia, Spain.