Papers

@article{sanudo_iberswmm_2025,

title = {IberSWMM+: A high-performance computing solver for 2D-1D pluvial flood modelling in urban environments},

author = {Esteban Sañudo-Costoya and Orlando García-Feal and L. Hagen and Luis Cea-Gómez and Jerónimo Puertas-Agudo and Carlos I. Montalvo-Montenegro and Reginald Alvarado-Vicencio and Julian Hofmann},

url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169424019991},

doi = {10.1016/j.jhydrol.2024.132603},

issn = {0022-1694},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-04-01},

urldate = {2025-04-01},

journal = {Journal of Hydrology},

volume = {651},

pages = {132603},

abstract = {Urban drainage modelling is essential for effective city planning and flood management. The increasing complexity of urban environments and the growing availability of high-resolution data have led to the need to develop more sophisticated and freely accessible urban drainage models. This paper presents the parallel implementation of Iber-SWMM, a freely distributed integrated 2D/1D urban drainage model for modelling surface and sewer flows and their interactions. Iber-SWMM constitutes an advance in the field by incorporating a fully distributed hydrological approach, advanced roof modelling tools, and GIS interoperability, offering a comprehensive solution for urban hydrodynamics. Originally designed for research in small urban drainage models due to CPU limitations, Iber-SWMM has now been enhanced with High Performance Computing (HPC) techniques. This allows for the simulation of high-resolution urban models with fine meshes comprising millions of elements, essential for accurate representation of complex urban geometries. We validated the model through laboratory-scale tests and two city-scale scenarios, providing detailed input data and demonstrating the applicability of the model in real-world situations. Our results show that the GPU-accelerated version achieves simulation speeds up to 200 times faster than the sequential version for large models. For instance, in a city-scale scenario with approximately 6 million cells, 3000 nodes, and 3000 links, simulation time was reduced from 72 h to just 20 min. To ensure result consistency and assess convergence, we conducted simulations using low, medium, and high-resolution computational meshes for each case study. Our findings indicate that both parallel and sequential versions produce consistent results, with convergence typically achieved at medium to high resolutions. Notably, we observed that for very large models, the computation of the drainage network in SWMM can become a bottleneck, suggesting an area for future optimization. By enabling the simulation of high-resolution urban models with millions of elements up to 200 times faster than sequential versions, this study bridges the gap between academic research and practical urban planning, empowering stakeholders to conduct more detailed, city-wide simulations, and ultimately contributing to faster urban flood risk management.},

keywords = {Dual drainage modelling, High performance computing, Iber - SWMM, Urban drainage, Urban flooding, Urban hydrology},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{cea_recent_2025,

title = {Recent advances and future challenges in urban pluvial flood modelling},

author = {Luis Cea-Gómez and Esteban Sañudo-Costoya and Carlos I. Montalvo-Montenegro and Juan F. Farfán-Durán and Jerónimo Puertas-Agudo and Paolo Tamagnone},

url = {https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2024.2446528},

doi = {10.1080/1573062X.2024.2446528},

issn = {1573-062X},

year  = {2025},

date = {2025-02-01},

urldate = {2025-02-01},

journal = {Urban Water Journal},

volume = {22},

number = {2},

pages = {149–173},

publisher = {Taylor & Francis},

abstract = {Urban pluvial floods are characterised by a number of features such as the high spatial and temporal resolution needed to capture their dynamics, the complexity of dual drainage systems and the lack of sewer data availability, which make them very different from other types of floods, like coastal or fluvial floods, and which increase the difficulty of modelling them. As a consequence, most flood management plans do not include a rigorous evaluation of urban pluvial flood risk. In this paper, we give a comprehensive view of the current state of urban pluvial flood modelling, not restricted to a mere description of the mathematical approaches, but also including the most relevant features that should be considered in their modelling, the validation studies that have been performed to date and our vision on the modelling challenges that should be addressed in the near future.},

note = {_eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2024.2446528},

keywords = {flood modelling, pluvial floods, Urban drainage, Urban floods},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{sanudo_large-scale_2024,

title = {Large-scale physical facility and experimental dataset for the validation of urban drainage models},

author = {Esteban Sañudo-Costoya and Luis Cea-Gómez and Jerónimo Puertas-Agudo and Juan Naves-García-Rendueles and Jose Anta-Álvarez},

url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hyp.15068},

doi = {10.1002/hyp.15068},

issn = {1099-1085},

year  = {2024},

date = {2024-01-01},

urldate = {2024-01-01},

journal = {Hydrological Processes},

volume = {38},

number = {1},

pages = {e15068},

abstract = {Numerical models are currently the main tool used to simulate the effects of urban flooding. The validation of these models requires thorough and accurate observed data in order to test their performance. The current study presents a series of laboratory experiments in a large-scale urban drainage physical facility of approximately 100 m2 that includes roofs, streets, inlets, manholes and sewers. The facility is equipped with a rainfall simulator as well as a surface runoff and pipe inflows generators. The experiments were divided in two sets. In Set 1 the surface runoff was generated exclusively by the rainfall input, while in Set 2 the rainfall simulator was used in combination with the runoff generators. In all the tests the water discharge was measured at points on the inlets, roofs, and outfall. The water depth at different locations of the facility was also measured. The experimental tests were replicated numerically using the urban drainage model Iber-SWMM. Experimental results show that, even in a relatively small catchment the peaks in the hydrographs generated at each element of the facility during intermittent rainfalls are significantly attenuated at the catchment outlet. The agreement between the experimental and numerical results show that there are some differences in the hydrographs generated at each element, but that these differences compensate each other and disappear at the outfall. The results generated provide the research community with a thorough and high-resolution dataset obtained under controlled laboratory conditions in a large-scale urban drainage facility, something which has not previously been available.},

note = {_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/hyp.15068},

keywords = {experimental dataset, physical model, rainfall simulator, rainfall-runoff experiments, Urban drainage, Urban hydrology},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{sanudo_modelling_2020,

title = {Modelling Pluvial Flooding in Urban Areas Coupling the Models Iber and SWMM},

author = {Esteban Sañudo-Costoya and Luis Cea-Gómez and Jerónimo Puertas-Agudo},

url = {https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/12/9/2647},

doi = {10.3390/w12092647},

issn = {2073-4441},

year  = {2020},

date = {2020-09-01},

urldate = {2026-08-06},

journal = {Water},

volume = {12},

number = {9},

pages = {2647},

publisher = {Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute},

abstract = {Dual urban drainage models allow users to simulate pluvial urban flooding by analysing the interaction between the sewer network (minor drainage system) and the overland flow (major drainage system). This work presents a free distribution dual drainage model linking the models Iber and Storm Water Management Model (SWMM), which are a 2D overland flow model and a 1D sewer network model, respectively. The linking methodology consists in a step by step calling process from Iber to a Dynamic-link Library (DLL) that contains the functions in which the SWMM code is split. The work involves the validation of the model in a simplified urban street, in a full-scale urban drainage physical model and in a real urban settlement. The three study cases have been carefully chosen to show and validate the main capabilities of the model. Therefore, the model is developed as a tool that considers the main hydrological and hydraulic processes during a rainfall event in an urban basin, allowing the user to plan, evaluate and design new or existing urban drainage systems in a realistic way.},

keywords = {dual drainage, Iber, SWMM, Urban drainage, Urban flooding},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}

@article{naves_using_2019,

title = {Using a 2D shallow water model to assess Large-Scale Particle Image Velocimetry (LSPIV) and Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques in a street-scale urban drainage physical model},

author = {Juan Naves-García-Rendueles and Jose Anta-Álvarez and Jerónimo Puertas-Agudo and Manuel Regueiro-Picallo and Joaquín Suárez-López},

url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169419304391},

doi = {10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.05.003},

issn = {0022-1694},

year  = {2019},

date = {2019-08-01},

urldate = {2026-08-05},

journal = {Journal of Hydrology},

volume = {575},

pages = {54–65},

abstract = {Physically-based numerical modelling of surface processes in urban drainage, such as pollutant wash-off or the assessment of flood risks, requires appropriate calibration and terrain elevation data to properly simulate the overland flows and thus to achieve useful results. Accordingly, this study aims to obtain an accurate representation of the runoff generated by three different rain intensities, 30, 50 and 80 mm/h, in a full-scale urban drainage physical model of 36 m2. The study focuses firstly on applying the Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetric technique to carry out a high-resolution and accurate topographic survey. This topography was implemented in a 2D shallow water model and the results were compared with those obtained using traditional data point measured topography. Negligible differences were found when comparing the two models with measured discharges at the physical model gully pots. However, significant differences were obtained in the velocity distributions, especially in the shallowest flow areas where drainage channels of a few millimeters’ depth appeared in the high resolution topographic survey. Results from the numerical model were compared with overland flow velocities, determined by applying a modified Large Scale Particle Image Velocimetry (LSPIV) methodology using fluorescent particles. With the SfM topography, the 2D model was able to obtain a better representation of the experimental data, since small scale irregularities of the pavement surface could be represented in the model domain. At the same time, LSPIV was presented as a very suitable tool for the accurate measurement of runoff velocities in urban drainage models, avoiding the interference of raindrop features in the recorded images and with overland water depths in the order of few millimeters.},

keywords = {2D shallow water model, LSPIV: Large Scale Particle Image Velocimetry, physical model, SFM: Structure from Motion, Urban drainage, Urban runoff},

pubstate = {published},

tppubtype = {article}

}