Project Overview

Overview of Green Storm-water Infrastructure 

Freshman Design Project

Our project is to find a site which causes a large amount of runoff in Philadelphia's sewer systems, causing pollution in the Schuylkill river. We will then design GSI (Green Storm-water Infrastructure) systems which will decrease the volume of runoff making its way into the sewer systems by either using it to water plants in a rain garden, or as extra water storage which will then allow the water to be used later for different functions such as a nearby building's toilet water. The GSI systems will also help improve the appearance of the area, by adding flowers and other greenery to the area. Above I have put the picture that they show on the Philadelphia Water Department website. This picture shows the vision for what Philadelphia could look like if we included more GSI. You can see how this vision is an improvement from the city that we know now. There are green roofs on almost every building, and the amount of foliage has greatly increased.

In order to create a successful plan, we will create a base plan of existing conditions a drainage area map, a proposal for the design plan, sections and profiles for the proposed systems, and, finally, use calculations for the GSI sizing and amount of runoff in the area. This will allow us to create a plan that is tailored to the site and will absorb the excess water in the areas that lead to the most runoff. It will also allow us to show how our GSI systems will work and why people should employ them in the sites that we have chosen.