527 & IWA Publishing 2011 Water Science & Technology 9 63.

3 9 2011

Past, present, and future design of urban drainage

systems with focus on Danish experiences
K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen

ABSTRACT

Climate change will influence the water cycle substantially, and extreme precipitation will become K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen (corresponding author)
Department of Environmental Engineering,
more frequent in many regions in the years to come. How should this fact be incorporated into Technical University of Denmark,
DK-2800 Lyngby,
design of urban drainage systems, if at all? And how important is climate change compared to
Denmark
other changes over time? Based on an analysis of the underlying key drivers of changes that are E-mail: kan@env.dtu.dk

expected to affect urban drainage systems the current problems and their predicted development
over time are presented. One key issue is management of risk and uncertainties and therefore a
framework for design and analysis of urban structures in light of present and future uncertainties
is presented.
Key words 9 climatic changes, design, risk management, urban drainage

INTRODUCTION

Climatic changes will influence the water cycle substantially.
In Scandinavia the predictions are for substantial increases in
the maximum discharges from urban areas, due to an increase
in the maximum precipitation (Christensen & Christensen
2003; Arnbjerg-Nielsen 2006). However, other key inputs into
the design process will also change over time, such as changes
in the design water levels in receiving waters, modelling
capabilities, city planning, environmental considerations,
and changes in social behaviour.
There is a need to forecast all the changes that can be
foreseen within the technical lifetime of the urban drainage
system in order to identify if climate change will be an
important aspect of the future design of urban drainage.
This paper discusses what drivers are likely to influence
design of urban drainage in the future and thus is an attempt
to predict what pressures the system should be able to cope
with. The paper draws primarily on Danish examples and
experiences, but the problems are similar to other developed
countries and the suggested risk management framework is
generally applicable.
URBAN DRAINAGE DESIGN
Being a very old and interdisciplinary engineering field, much
of the design rules for urban drainage are based on heuristics
rather than rigorous development of a scientific method.
However, much of the research performed over the last
decades shows that, for typical urban catchments, the perfor-
mance of the rational method for design situations is good in
terms of evaluation of both hydrological and hydraulic per-
formance of sewer systems (Jensen 1990; Lyngfelt 1991;
Bengtsson & Niemczynowicz 1998). For complicated systems
more advanced design methods can be utilised; however, they
all comprise the basic input as outlined in Table 1.
The rate with which the design rules are updated can be
utilised as an indicator of the lifetime of the design practice.
In Figure 1 the frequency with which the guidelines are
revised or expanded in terms of new recommendations is
shown for Denmark. The published guidelines represent
major or minor updates and therefore the most interesting
aspect is the change in frequency of such publications. There
seems to be many changes in the 1950s, 1980s and 2000s.
These changes correspond primarily to changes in rainfall
knowledge, calculation methods, and rainfall knowledge,
respectively.
Recommendations of design rainfall have been issued
since 1928; see Figure 2. Every time a substantial amount of
new data became available they were processed and turned
into an input to engineering design. Until 1979 measurements
were scarce and processing was manual and labour–
intensive, but at that time automatic rainfall gauges were

doi: 10.2166/wst.2011.253
 528 K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen 9 Past, present, and future design of urban drainage systems with focus on Danish experiences Water Science & Technology 9 63.3 9 2011

Table 1 9 Needed input to the design of urban drainage systems

Simplest methodology State-of-the-art

Forcing func- Design rainfall Continuous calculation of runoff based on precipitation and snowmelt
tion

Assessment of Actual measurements of connected hard surfaces by means of GIS systems

impervious areas

Calculation Rational method Two-dimensional calculation of surface flows, one-dimensional calculation

method of sewer flows and one–three-dimensional calculation of structures

Performance Frequency for Criteria based on ethical and socio-economic consideration. Two concerns arise: Flooding of assets
criteria exceeding pipe and protection of the environment
capacity

installed and data quality checks and processing could be
made automatically (Jrgensen et al. 1998). Based on these
new gauges, regional models of design rainfall have been
constructed that reduce the at-site measurement uncertainty
substantially and have led to more precise design of the
structures (Madsen et al. 2002; Madsen et al. 2009). Now
the dominating uncertainty is a structural uncertainty; the
anticipated changes in precipitation caused by future climatic
changes. These have been assessed on the regional scale, but
significant uncertainty remains (Onof & Arnbjerg-Nielsen
2009; Larsen et al. 2009; Arnbjerg-Nielsen 2010). Therefore
the uncertainties of the predicted rainfall in 2110 are sub-
stantially larger than the present uncertainty.
LOOKING BACK TO PREDICT THE FUTURE
to see what changes have occurred. The climate change signal
from climate change modelling is typically stated as a change
over 100 years in order to give a good signal to noise ratio.
Therefore this section aims at highlighting some of the
changes that have occurred over the last 100 years. The
points raised in this section of the paper are based on
‘‘grey’’ literature if they were published at all. The objective
is not to give a detailed analysis of the development, but
rather to give indications of what changes we may foresee
within urban drainage over the next 100 years.
The following statements indicate the amount of techni-
cal and social development over the last 100 years:
 Automobiles were invented; maximum speed around
10 km/h. The main means of transportation were horse
carriages and walking.

When incorporating climate change impacts into future

design of urban drainage it is helpful to look into the past

Figure 2 9 Change in recommended design storm intensities for a two year return period in
Denmark based on measurements and predicted impacts of climate change. The
horizontal line from 1947 to 1999 indicates the value typically used in that
Figure 1 9 The number of published guidelines for design on urban drainage systems in period. Since 1999 regionalised estimates have been used. The assessed design
Denmark since 1950. The full list of guidelines, including downloadable copies, is value for 2010 is based on analysis of outputs from regional climate change
available at WPC (2010). models (Arnbjerg-Nielsen 2010).
 529 K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen 9 Past, present, and future design of urban drainage systems with focus on Danish experiences
 Water supply systems and drainage systems were under
construction, with parts of cities lacking access to tap
water.
 Water closets were not allowed due to the need for
fertilisers in the farming industry.
The antiquarian nature of these examples indicates that
over a 100 year period substantial changes have occurred in
both technical and social systems. As a result it is necessary to
try to identify approximately how long a time horizon each of
the components has and compare that to the expected tech-
nical life times of the assets of urban drainage; see Table 2.
From the table it may be concluded that only the pipes and
manholes of the sewer system have a technical lifetime that is
comparable to that of anticipated climatic changes due to
human greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the cost of constructing
these simple assets constitutes the vast majority of the overall
costs of urban drainage while increasing pipe sizes during
construction or renovation only bears small extra costs. There-
fore the design of the pipes and manholes must take into
account the future changes in design rainfall, since construc-
tion of too small or too large a sewer system will have an
impact on the long-term performance of urban drainage.
CLIMATE CHANGE AS THE MAIN DRIVER
INFLUENCING FUTURE PERFORMANCE OF
URBAN DRAINAGE SYSTEMS
Climate change is likely to be a significant driver of change
and will influence all important aspects of human life for
current and coming generations. In design of urban drainage
systems the main direct effect will be a change of the design
rainfall intensity. However, due to the complex and dynamic
relationship between climate and human usage a broader
view can be adopted, as in the development of the Inter-
governmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios of future
climate change, where the emission drivers have been studied
carefully (Nakicenovic & Swart 2000). In their summary for
policymakers, Nakicenovic and Swart state the following:
‘‘This Report reinforces our understanding that the main
driving forces of future greenhouse gas trajectories will con-
tinue to be demographic change, social and economic devel-
opment, and the rate and direction of technological change.’’
As such, the climate change predictions are comparable to
setting up a predator–prey relationship between the dominat-
ing species on the planet (humans) and how the ecosystem on
the planet reacts to and interacts with the impacts of this
species. The underlying assumption of climate change then
Water Science & Technology 9 63.3 9 2011
comes down to the number of humans inhabiting the planet,
the (finite) resources each of these humans consumes and
disposes of, and how we interact with the planet.
Number of humans and economic wealth
The scenarios developed and illustrated in Nakicenovic &
Swart (2000) divide the future development paths into four
scenario storylines under which economic growth and
human population can be predicted. The storylines are devel-
oped based on two main axes of development paths: eco-
nomic (A) – environmental (B) and global (1) – regional (2).
As shown in Figure 3 the predicted development paths differ
substantially between the scenario families. It is interesting to
note that, with the assumptions underlying the ‘‘global’’
scenario families, the predicted development is the most
positive from a welfare economic point of view, with the
smallest global population and the highest increase in GDP.
The correlation between development scenario and carbon
emissions is poor, partly because the A1 scenario covers the
entire range of possible emission paths.
Technological change
In western societies one of the key drivers of technological
change is incremental innovation, driven by market econ-
omy. However, in the context of urban drainage there has
been little development from the development of the
rational method around 1850 until the arising of environ-
mental concerns and new computational methods more
than 100 years later. The first development of environmen-
tal legislation on the European scale was the Bathing
Water Directive (European Union 1976), happening con-
currently with the development of computer models for
advanced numerical simulation of storm water runoff such
as SWMM (US EPA 2010). During the last decades devel-
opment of water treatment technologies has emerged
quickly, and within a foreseeable future the choice of
technology will be based on the needed water quality and
available energy rather than emission criteria based on the
raw water quality. This means that closed loop water cycles
can be developed on municipal or smaller scales, which is
already taking place in Singapore (Qin et al. 2004). The
investments represented in existing urban drainage
structure (see Table 2) represents a lock-in and thus the
introduction of dramatically new types of infrastructure will
either call for high investment costs or must await depre-
ciation of existing infrastructure over the traditionally
anticipated technical lifetimes.
 530 K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen 9 Past, present, and future design of urban drainage systems with focus on Danish experiences Water Science & Technology 9 63.3 9 2011

Table 2 9 Crude assessments of the expected lifetimes of the inputs to urban drainage design and the designed assets. A short expected lifetime corresponds to less than 10–15 years, a long
lifetime corresponds to more than 50–60 years

Expected lifetime Comment

Forcing functions

Design rainfall Medium – long The WMO reporting system uses a 30 year averaging to account for
climate variability. The precipitation change in climate change models
usually corresponds to a change over 50–100 years.

Connected area Medium Small changes in downtown districts, large in newly urbanised areas.

Calculation method

Hydraulic models Medium Application of hydraulic modelling of sewers seems to have reached an
end-point. Development of hydraulic modelling of other types of flow
continues. Time constant is difficult to assess due to rapid development
of computational speed.

Performance criteria

Flooding Medium There has been a low awareness of this performance criterion until a
decade ago. It will depend on social factors how this criterion will
develop due to the ability to model the risk of flooding much better in
the future.

Environmental objectives Short The environmental legislation changes every 5–10 years, setting new
targets.

Assets to be designed

Sewers: pipes and manholes Long Concrete pipes are on average more than 60 years old before first
maintenance of physical deterioration and more than 80 years old
before replacement is needed.

RTC Short Most components and communication standards change within a decade.

Pumps and other mechanical equipment Short Small pumps may have longer lifetimes.

Detention ponds Short–medium The structures themselves have a high technical lifetime whereas the
services they provide change based on the performance criteria that
change rapidly.

Social change planning is being investigated, but no firm conclusions can

Social change is difficult to model and understand even in
hindsight, which makes it very difficult indeed to predict
future changes in social behaviour. Nevertheless, these
social changes are important to predict as they are vital to
assessing changes in performance criteria. The rapid change
in environmental protection legislation has mainly been
driven by a change in perception of how humans interact
with nature, and is therefore a result of social change.
Currently inclusion of social aspects into urban drainage
be made yet as to where the development will lead us
(Geldof & Stahre 2005; Wong & Brown 2010). Development
of virtual social networks on the internet and the availabil-
ity of much more focussed news services lead to more
diverse societies within nations (Friedman 2007). This
trend is likely to continue in the future, putting more
emphasis on narratives and story-telling rather than engi-
neering science. This way the engineer will become one of
many stakeholders and the solutions must be adapted to
common targets.
 531 K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen 9 Past, present, and future design of urban drainage systems with focus on Danish experiences
Figure 3 9 Mean values of predicted development of human population and global economic wealth depending on scenario group. Data adapted from Nakicenovic & Swart (2000).
HOW TO COPE WITH AND INCORPORATE THE
DRIVERS IN DESIGN OF URBAN DRAINAGE
SYSTEMS
Cost recovery for utilities
One of the concerns of utilities globally is how to achieve a
sustainable cost recovery of their services. Indeed, there has
been a deterioration of the urban drainage systems over the
last decades (Pollert et al. 2005; Chocat et al. 2007) and there
is good evidence that the value of the assets in urban drainage
is decreasing due to lack of maintenance (e.g. Danish EPA
2004). This finding is supported by several local and national
willingness-to-pay studies that indicate that increased costs
are difficult to recover. However, the deterioration cannot yet
be identified by the public, either in terms of visible deteriora-
tion, or in terms of reduced performance of the sewer
systems. Once the deterioration becomes visible in terms of
more frequent failures then the necessary resources will be
allocated rapidly. One argument is economic; even in the
poorest regions of the world it is cost effective to install and
maintain effective sanitation systems, and the return of the
investment supersedes the return of water supply (Hutton
et al. 2007). A cost-benefit analysis of upgrading of sewer
systems in order to maintain service levels of flooding has
also indicated a very high rate of return based on a case study
in Denmark (Arnbjerg-Nielsen & Fleischer 2009).
Human health is another reason why cost recovery issues
will be solved when the service levels decrease; even small
increases in exposure to unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene
give rise to significantly higher risk of diarrhoeal diseases,
which is an overall cost to society (Prüss-Üstün et al. 2004).
For this reason sanitation is one of the targets specified in
the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (United
Nations 2009) and for the same reason cost recovery issues
Water Science & Technology 9 63.3 9 2011
will only persist in the developed world as long as the
deterioration does not lead to an increase in the disease
burden and/or a significant reduction in the level of service
provided by the utility.
Modelling
As described in Table 1, the rational method was utilised for
more than a century until new computational methods
enabled more detailed calculations. In 1984 these new
calculation methods were implemented into the Danish
code of conduct (Jensen 1984) by introducing four standard
levels of calculation according to the complexity of the
sewer system to be designed. A fifth level was indicated as
the ultimate calculation goal, denoted the ‘‘infinity level’’.
The ‘‘infinity level’’ consisted of calculation of the perfor-
mance of a large sewer system based on a long historical
rain series with a 1-dimensional dynamical simulation tool.
Less than 20 years later, several commercial software
packages are able to calculate this ‘‘infinity level’’ automa-
tically and process the output into easily understandable
tables and graphs. Currently much more computationally
demanding calculations are commercially available, where
the 1-dimensional flow in the sewer system is coupled
dynamically with 2-dimensional flow on the city surface
to address exceedance flows. The main reason for this is an
increase in computational speed of roughly a factor of a
million over these three decades (Le Treut et al. 2007). On
the time scale of climate change we must therefore foresee a
shift in the modelling paradigm; the main limitation will not
be computer calculation speed, but rather to identify the
type of model that most appropriately will give a robust
answer to the problem at hand. That might very well be the
rational method in some cases, but in other cases more
 532 K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen 9 Past, present, and future design of urban drainage systems with focus on Danish experiences
complicated models will be utilised, hopefully resulting in
cities that are more resilient to rainfall extremes.
Management of uncertainties and risks
Traditionally the criteria for flood protection have focussed
on assessment of a design value as close to the mean as
possible, i.e. obtaining a service level close to the stipulated
design. The same principle has been applied to the environ-
mental field by setting up allowable discharges for urban
drainage. However, the field of environmental research is
headed towards a more risk-based approach, notably by the
application of the precautionary principle (United Nations
1992; European Commission 2000). It seems a reasonable
prediction that these principles will also be incorporated
into the formulation of performance criteria for urban drai-
nage. In fact, some of these principles for incorporation of
uncertainties have already been incorporated into Danish
design practice (Harremoës et al. 2005), based on the princi-
ples outlined in Walker et al. (2003). In brief, the method
describes how to assess the overall uncertainty of design of
urban drainage structures by evaluating statistical and other
uncertainties and describe them in a simple framework.
Having assessed the overall uncertainty the actual design
level should then be selected as the higher-than-median-
percentile of the stipulated design criteria. Based on an
analysis of costs of errors in the design phase in a few
urban catchments the 84th percentile was suggested, indicat-
ing that only 16% of all designs will result in lack of
compliance with the stipulated criteria.
Incorporation of uncertainties and risks into the design
process will change the codes of conduct from recommend-
ing a specific value, e.g. a design flow of 140 L/s, to a check
list stipulating what factors will influence the design. This will
lead to an interval of design flows, say 100–200 L/s, depend-
ing on the mean design value, current and future uncertain-
ties, forecast horizon, and the consequence of exceeding the
design criteria for the choice of technology. This will lead to a
‘‘comfort zone’’ of design values for the engineer, where his/
her experience indicates that this is a reasonable design. This
comfort zone is indicated in Figure 4. Communication with
other stakeholders will sometimes lead to a design that is
outside the engineering comfort zone, by choosing values that
lead to designs that are non-optimal from an engineering
point of view, either because there is a high probability that
the performance criteria will not be met or because the
structure to be designed is not produced in an efficient
manner.
Water Science & Technology 9 63.3 9 2011
Figure 4 9 A design concept must predict both the direction and magnitude of future
changes and the uncertainties related to the prediction. The engineer will
typically choose design values based on experience and a mathematical
framework for management of risks and uncertainties. Interaction with other
stakeholders may sometimes lead to designs outside the ‘‘comfort zone’’ of the
engineering tradition. In general some scenario predictions will result in lower
design values; however, this is not the case for the processes discussed for
Northern Europe.
SUGGESTED FRAMEWORK FOR DESIGN
PARAMETERS FOR CONSTRUCTION AND
RENOVATION OF URBAN DRAINAGE
STRUCTURES INCORPORATING UNCERTAINTIES
While the concept of a design storm of 2, 10, or 100 years is a
well known concept to engineers, it proves difficult to com-
municate this concept to other professions and society in
general, especially when an area has experienced several
extensive floods during a short period of time. Therefore
this concept should perhaps be updated to allow a terminol-
ogy that directly relates observations to acceptable ‘‘beha-
viour’’ by weather and still allows natural variation of the
rainfall extremes.
The concept for design and analysis of systems to comply
with given performance criteria is shown in Figure 5. The
engineers spend much time in assessing the true but
unknown design value of all inputs by detailed analysis of
all measured data and then design a system that complies
with the performance criteria by ensuring that the true, but
unknown, damage level is at least on the same level as the
design value. Over time the design value may change due to
changes in the underlying process or collection of more
measurements, as indicated in Figure 2. However, the
damage level also changes over time due to changes in
land use, degree of paved areas, urban development,
increased use of low impact design, upgrading of the sewer
system, etc. The main point of the figure is to illustrate that
the engineers spend much time on assessing the true value of
 533 K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen 9 Past, present, and future design of urban drainage systems with focus on Danish experiences
Figure 5 9 The random process of maximum annual extreme rainfall is illustrated by the
continuous black line. The thick black line indicates the true, but unknown,
design value for exceeding once in ten years. The broken line indicates the true,
but unknown, value for when damage will occur in the catchment.
the thick black line while the general public (and other
professionals) only have interest in urban drainage when
the broken line is exceeded by observations.
As illustrated in Figure 5, sometimes frequent excee-
dances of the true unknown damage level occur in existing
systems, even though the system complies with the perfor-
mance criteria. An example of such behaviour is illustrated in
Figure 5 in the period from 1985 to 2000. These exceedances
are not due to actual non-compliance, but due to natural
variation in the rainfall process. When these situations occur
there will be a heated debate between the urban drainage
professionals and other professions. The urban professional
might try to argue that the storms correspond to a 30, 20, 25,
and 15 year storm, respectively, which then makes all the
damage acceptable from an engineering point of view. How-
ever, to society as a whole this type of information is
perceived as bad excuses rather than a scientific explanation.
Therefore a framework that specifically addresses both the
needs of the engineering professionals and the needs of the
general public is needed. The framework should specifically
address the uncertainties of both lines in Figure 5. The
framework thus consists of the following components:
1. A methodology for assessing and managing the inherent
uncertainties in the design and analysis of urban drainage;
2. A methodology for choosing when the urban drainage
capacity should be upgraded based on the inherent uncer-
tainties due to natural variation;
3. A weighing of the uncertainties for the two situations.
In general 1) is aimed at ensuring that engineers add a
safety margin in the design, thus implicitly ensuring that the
Water Science & Technology 9 63.3 9 2011
urban drainage system complies with the performance require-
ment with a high degree of certainty. This corresponds to an
extra protection for the consumers relative to the stipulated
performance criteria. Similarly 2) is aimed at ensuring that it
should be made more certain that the urban drainage system is
not upgraded simply because of random fluctuations in the
frequency of exceedances, but should be due to a high prob-
ability of non-compliance of the performance criteria.
The weighing of the uncertainties in 3) is therefore a
connection between the two types of errors that can occur
in actual situations: apparent non-compliance in a system that
actually complies with the requirements and apparent com-
pliance by a system that actually is not complying. The
weighing between the two types of errors can be done by
means of economic analysis of the cost of errors for the two
situations. In the following a more simple approach will be
adopted, assuming that the errors have equal weight. This
corresponds to choosing a common safety level for making
erroneous choices.
Assessing and managing inherent uncertainties in
design and analysis of urban drainage systems
The objective is to establish a framework that can assess the
probability distribution of the broken line relative to the thick
black line. Harremoës et al. (2005) suggested a methodology
based on Walker et al. (2003). This methodology is adopted
with some refinement to yield the following equation:
qdesign ¼ frain  fclimate  fpaved area  fmodel  qmean
where
frain denotes the systematic difference between a historical
rain series and the regional precipitation model for the
catchment (used only if a historical rainfall series is used as
input in the calculations). This is a bias-correction;
fclimate denotes the predicted most likely relative change
in extreme precipitation for the given duration and return
period due to climate change;
fpaved area denotes the predicted most likely relative
change in connected paved area;
fmodel denotes the model uncertainty related to setting up
the hydraulic and hydrologic models of the catchment;
qmean denotes the best estimate of the design flow, corre-
sponding to the red curve in Figure 5.
Each of the f(?) denotes an uncertainty, a bias, or an
anticipated change over time that should be taken into
account in the design process. Hansen & Liu (2004) made
an analysis of a few catchments and showed that for these
 534 K. Arnbjerg-Nielsen 9 Past, present, and future design of urban drainage systems with focus on Danish experiences
Table 3 9 Calculated minimum observation periods required for complying with a
requirement of being at least 16% confident that the true rate of occurrences
is one in 10 years
Number of exceedances Three times Four times Five times
Minimum observation period (year) 14 21 29
Mean intensity in period (year) 4.6 5.3 5.8
catchments a factor of 1.23 corresponds approximately to one
times the standard deviation of the model uncertainty based
on the methodology outlined by Arnbjerg-Nielsen & Harre-
moës (1996). The correction factor frain is a simple bias
correction factor that should be applied only if there seems
to be a systematic difference between the historical rain series
used for the design and the regional model for the area. The
last two correction factors are scenario uncertainties that will
evolve over time following a path as indicated in Figure 4.
Choosing when to upgrade an urban drainage system
based on inherent natural variation
Just as the sewer system has been designed to protect the
consumers in an area against flooding, by choosing a high
confidence level the utility should be protected against having
to upgrade the urban drainage system due to random fluctua-
tions of extreme rainfall. Several studies have indicated that a
Poisson process describes the occurrences of extreme pre-
cipitation well, e.g. Madsen et al. (2002). Therefore this model
can be used to model the occurrences of rainfall. Given the
true rate of occurrences, l, the lower confidence level based
on n occurrences in T years can be calculated as w22(n þ 1),
1p/2 (Stuart & og Ord 1994). The resulting table for when it
is necessary to take action for a safety level of one times the
standard deviation for a 10 year return period is shown in
Table 3. This level corresponds to an 84th percentile when
assuming normal distribution of the variate. Thus the sug-
gested level of confidence corresponds to ensuring the same
probability of upgrading existing systems that actually comply
with the stipulated performance criteria as designing a system
that is too small due to errors in the input data. This will give
the same level of protection against errors for both consumers
and utilities.
CONCLUSIONS
Due to the long technical lifetime of the sewer systems (e.g.
pipes, manholes, and structures) it is necessary to assess,
Water Science & Technology 9 63.3 9 2011
predict and incorporate not only the present, but also the
future conditions in order to make an optimal and robust
design of the urban drainage systems. The need for careful
evaluation of current and future conditions and resilience in
choice of solutions is greatest for the assets with long techni-
cal lifetimes, whereas assets with short technical lifetimes can
be optimised with less attention to long-term performance
and resilience.
Regardless of the technical lifetime, there is a need to
compensate for more complex decision making by improving
communication within engineering fields and with other
scientific fields and society in general. It is of paramount
importance to incorporate principles of risk management into
design of infrastructure such as urban drainage systems. This
way focus is moved from a detailed optimisation of design
under current assumptions to a more robust assessment of the
consequences of errors in the description of, or future
changes in, forcing functions, computational methods, and
performance criteria.
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