Comparison between a detailed and a simplified integrated model for the assessment of urban drainage environmental impact on an ephemeral river

The benefit of integrated analysis has been demonstrated in technical literature and it is also required by the EU Water Framework Directive 60/2000, which proposes a water-quality-orientated view of the whole urban drainage system and oversees new ways of assessing its performance. Integrated models, such as any complex modelling approach, often have prohibitive data availability requirements that reduce their applicability. Moreover, widely different approaches can be applied, ranging from simple conceptual models to complex physically based ones. In the present paper, two approaches have been compared using data from an experimental catchment in Bologna ( Italy), which consists of a part…