Water level and discharge measurements

The knowledge of water levels and discharges in urban drainage and stormwater management (UDSM) systems is of key importance to understand their functioning and processes, to evaluate their performance, and to provide data for modelling. In this chapter, devoted mainly to underground combined and separate sewer pipe systems, various methods and technologies are described and discussed. After an introduction to important aspects to deal with when measuring discharges in sewer systems, the following parts are presented successively: (i) measurement of water level with rulers, and pressure, ultrasonic and radar sensors, (ii) measurement of flow velocity with ultrasonic, Doppler, velocity profiler, free surface, and electromagnetic sensors, (iii) direct measurement of discharge with pre-calibrated devices, physical scale models, computational fluid dynamics modelling and use of pumping stations, and (iv) detection and/or measurement of infiltration into and exfiltration from sewers, with flow or pressure measurements, tracer experiments, distributed temperature sensing and geophysical methods.