Proceedings of the 19th IAHR-APD Congress 2014, Hanoi, Vietnam

ISBN 978604821338-1

Performance modeling of bioretention cell

Z. Y. LI, K. M. LAM
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong,
e-mail: kmlam@hku.hk

ABSTRACT
This paper introduces a simple performance indicator to evaluate the hydrologic benefits of a bioretention system in
reducing stormwater runoff in a specific region. The estimation is made using the stormwater management model
(SWMM) with input from the recent 10-year (2004-2013) rainfall record of Hong Kong at 1-minute intervals. The model
flowrate outputs of stormwater runoff into the bioretention system, including the catchment area being served, and
stormwater overflow from the system are integrated over each year to obtain the yearly total stormwater volumes. The
ratio of stormwater volume retained by bioretention to the inflow volume is used as a single-value indicator to quantify
the retention capacity of the bioretention system. Performance evaluation is made for various values of infiltration rate
of subsoil and area ratio between bioretention cell and drainage catchment. The use of the performance indicator in
bioretention design is demonstrated.

Keywords: Stormwater management; Low-impact design; Bioretention

1. INTRODUCTION
As a type of stormwater best management practices,
bioretention has the hydrologic potential to reduce both
the peak flow of surface runoff discharging into the
storm drain and the total volume of runoff generated
from the same rainfall event. A bioretention cell retains a
portion of surface runoff within its depressed soil surface
and therefore provides on-site retention/detention of
stormwater (Prince Georges Country, 2007). The
hydrologic performance of bioretention facilities is
affected by a number of design parameters, such as depth
of soil media, infiltration rate of soil media, plant species,
watershed ratio, ponding volume, and infiltration rate of
in-situ soil. Bioretention facilities with deeper soil media
have been observed to be able to improve the outflow
volume reduction ratio due to greater water absorption
capacity (Li et al., 2009; Brown and Hunt, 2012). Soil
media with great infiltration rate is prone to reduce the
probability of occurrence of overflow by quickly drawing
down water ponding on soil surface (He and Davis, 2011;
Brown and Hunt, 2012) but is deemed to produce greater
rate of outflow from bottom of soil media (Kim et al.,
2012).
The major flow components in a bioretention system
consist of inflow, overflow/bypass, and retained volume.
The bioretention system is usually not only comprised of
the bioretention cell area but also the adjacent impervious
catchment surface draining to the bioretention cell. The
inflow to the system is the part of precipitation leading to
surface runoff generation. The inflow could be regarded
as the runoff generation on the impervious area
concerned without the implementation of a bioretention
cell. The overflow is the water not intercepted by or
flowing away from the cell when the retention volume
has already been filled. It could be regarded as the runoff
generation with the implementation of a bioretention cell.
Depending on the exact configurations of the bioretention
cell, the volume of runoff retained inside, may leave the
cell by various means including through an underdrain if
provided, percolation into subsoil with permeable subsoil
bottom, evapotranspiration by plants, and other paths.
The retained volume could be deemed as the hydrologic
benefit acquired by implementation of bioretention since
it leads to delayed loading on the urban storm drainage if
discharged via underdrain, or replenishes the soil
moisture beneath the impervious cover.
The hydraulic and hydrologic response of a catchment
integrated with bioretention is commonly investigated
using (1) parcel-scale physical models of which the
inflow rate and overflow rate are monitored during local
rainfall events; or (2) numerical models that estimate the
possible response for different design parameters under
design storm events or under recorded events. The
former method could provide intact flow information,
but the cost is high in respect of construction, monitoring
activities, and maintenance. Furthermore, only one or
several sets of design parameters can be studied. The
latter method relies heavily on numerical modelling and
verification is required before application but, it can
simulate many design situations which would otherwise
be too expensive to be studied by physical models.
The primary design parameters for a bioretention system
include the retention depth of the bioretention cell, the
area of the bioretention cell as compared to the drainage
area of the served catchment, the infiltration rate of the
subsoil, provision of underdrains, as well as non-design
factors such as the rainfall pattern.
The retention depth of a bioretention cell governs the
volume of stormwater that can be temporary stored
inside the cell. The recommended average depth is 150
mm for practical reason; although greater benefit is
expected with greater depth provided (Prince George's
County, 1999). The infiltration rate into the subsoil is

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primarily determined by the hydraulic conductivity k of Kong. Among the major flows in a bioretention cell, the
the soil media. The exact infiltration rate is hard to be indicator only takes into account the overflow and inflow
controlled after installed due to ageing, clogging and the because these two parameters are easy to obtain from
effect from underdrains. The hydraulic conductivity of either monitoring on a physical model or numerical
soil media may range from 5 to 80 mm/h. A minimum simulation with SWMM.
value of k = 25 mm/h is recommended for practical
The inflow is taken to be the runoff generated
reason (Prince George's County 2007).
instantaneously by the corresponding precipitation if
The ratio (AR) of the surface area of actual bioretention there were no bioretention cell connected to the
cell over the total catchment area draining to the cell impervious catchment surface. Then the overflow is the
determines the inflow loading on the cell. For instance, a stormwater runoff with bioretention implemented. The
bioretention cell in a system of AR = 10% receives 10 difference between inflow and overflow is achieved by
times effective runoff on its area and its retention depth bioretention and this retention capacity becomes a
and infiltration capacity is shared as 1/10 over the suitable performance indicator for bioretention. In this
drainage area. It is expected that a bioretention system study, the yearly total accumulated volumes of
with a higher AR will yield greater hydrologic benefits. stormwater generated by inflow (without bioretention)
and by overflow (with bioretention) are computed,
In addition to the above three design parameters, the
whereby the yearly total volume of stormwater retained
rainfall pattern has to be taken into consideration when
by bioretention is calculated from the difference. The
evaluating the performance of a bioretention system. The
ratio (RR) of the retained volume over the inflow volume
same design of bioretention may produce desirable
is used as the performance indicator.
benefit in one region, however, may result in less benefit
in more rainy regions, or may be an over-design for the
2.2 Physical Model and Numerical Simulation
same hydraulic goal in less rainy regions. Thus, analysis
or estimation under local rainfall pattern is essential in The physical model in this study was a planter-box
determining the appropriate bioretention design bioretention cell that received runoff generated from a
recommendation in a particular region. The rainfall sheet-steel roof of an adjacent temporary shed (Figure 1).
pattern includes features such as duration, intensity, The details have been described in Li and Lam (2013) and
depth, seasonal pattern, and annual fluctuations. Lam et al. (2014). The surface are of the bioretention cell
itself was 0.9 m 2 while the catchment area of the roof was
Hong Kong is has a subtropical climate with distinct wet
26 m 2. The bioretention cell had a controlled retention
and dry seasons affected by monsoons. The average
depth at 95 mm and the infiltration rate of the soil media
annual rainfall depth, from past 30-year record, is 2,400
used in the cell was about 40 mm/h.
mm but with large annual fluctuations ranging from
<1,500 mm to >3,200 mm. To combat flood risks, Hong The flowrate of stormwater runoff into the bioretention
Kong has developed extensive hardcore stormwater cell from the roof and the overflow rate out of the cell
drainage systems. However, low-impact development were measured with ultrasonic flow meters at 5-s or 10-s
(LID) is not widely implemented in Hong Kong. There intervals during two periods: August 2 September 5,
are potential benefits in a wider use of LID such as 2013 and March 29 April 8, 2014. The volumes of
bioretention but it is necessary to evaluate the global inflow and overflow can be integrated from the flow
performance of bioretention under Hong Kong rates.
conditions.
This paper presents a method to estimate the hydrologic
performance of a bioretention system by using the Storm
Water Management Model (SWMM) with variations in
the ratio of cell area over drainage area and the subsoil
infiltration rate. The estimation is based on yearly total
stormwater retention capacity of the system with Hong
Kong recent 10-year rainfall record as input. The effect of
rainfall variations from the long term mean value is also
discussed. In addition, the paper presents some results
obtained from a physical model of a small bioretention
system.

2. METHODOLOGY

2.1 Performance Indicator

In order to evaluate the potential benefits and hydrologic
performance of bioretention in Hong Kong, a global
performance indicator is proposed in this paper. A
single-value indicator is desirable to quantify the benefit
of bioretention for stormwater runoff mitigation over a
statistically lengthy period under the rainfall conditions
of Hong Kong conditions. The time span for statistical
evaluation is chosen at 1 year, which should be sufficient
to cover a typical annual precipitation pattern in Hong

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Figure 1. (a) Physical model of bioretention system, consisting of
plywood-box bioretention cell and catchment area on roof of shed.
The numerical model SWMM was used to simulate the
physical model at first for model verification. Then it was
used to estimate the bioretention performance for the
past 10-year rainfall of Hong Kong under various
infiltration rates and area ratios of cell area over drainage
area.
Two subcatchments were used in SWMM. The first one
represented the roof catchment surface with 100%
impervious area at 0.0026 ha, overland flow path at 13 m,
slope 5%. Runoff from this subcatchment was routed into
the second subcatchment which represented the
bioretention cell. For model verification, the area of this
subcatchment was set at 0.00009 ha according to the
actual size of the physical model. In the second part of
the simulation, 29 different values were used for this area
so that the ratio of cell area over drainage area (AR)
varied between 1% and 100%. It was expected that
bioretention performance was sensitive at the range from
AR = 1% to 10% and in practice the ratio was usually
below 10%, so smaller intervals were used at AR < 20% in
the variations.
For the parameters of bioretention cell in SWMM, the
followings were used for the simulation of the physical
model: surface storage depth 95 mm, soil thickness 400
mm of conductivity 40 mm/h. In the second simulation,
a storage depth of 150 mm was used since this deeper
depth would provide more beneficial effect for Hong
Kong. Different values were used for the conductivity of
the 40-mm thick soil at k (mm/h) = {2, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40,
60, 80}.
The time step of simulation is SWMM was set at 1 minute
and the routing interval at 30 s. Green and Ampt
infiltration model was for the infiltration process.
For the physical model tests, 58 rainfall events were
recorded during the monitoring periods. For each event,
the inflow and overflow rates were integrated over the
event duration into flow volumes or flow depths.
The second simulation covered 10-year rainfall record
during 2004 2013. The 1-minute record was from Hong
Kong Observatory. The model flowrate outputs of inflow
and overflow were integrated into volumes year by year.
The volumes could be converted into depths by dividing
with the drainage area.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1 Model Verification
The performance of the SWMM model in simulating the
flow response of bioretention system is verified by
comparing the simulated overflow volume and the
measured data on the physical model for the 58
monitored rainfall events. As described in earlier
sections, during these events within the monitoring wet
seasons in 2013 2014, the flowrates of stormwater
runoff into the experimental bioretention cell and the
overflow rate out of the cell have been measured at 5-s or
10-s intervals (Figure 1). The experimental data of
stormwater volumes of inflow and overflow over each
rainfall events are obtained from integration of these
flowrates. For the SWMM modelling, the same
procedures are used to obtain the overflow volume from
the model outputs of overflow discharge. It should be
noted that the physical model uses a shallower storage
depth of 95 mm and the area ratio is low at about 3.5%;
thus the bioretention cell was often overflowed for the
heavy rainfall events.
The comparison in Figure 2 proves that the SWMM
model prediction is very good. The Nash-Sutcliffe
coefficient for the hydrologic prediction is calculated to
be 0.972 (Nash and Sutcliffe, 1970).
Figure 2. Comparison between monitored overflow depths and
SWMM prediction.
3.2 10-year Performance for Hong Kong
In the second simulation, the yearly total inflow volume
of stormwater runoff and bioretention volume are
computed with SWMM for the 10 years using different
values of infiltration rate and ratio of catchment areas.
For each year, the performance indicator is calculated
simply as the ratio between the retention volume and the
inflow volume. The 10-year values can be averaged to
indicate the long-term average performance of the
bioretention system.
Figure 3 shows the 10-year averaged performance
indicator by the retention ratio RR in terms of yearly total
volume retained by bioretention over yearly total inflow
volume into the catchment. The data are shown as
contour levels on the kAR plane and the part of AR <
10% is shown in Figure 3(b) as an enlarged view. It is
clear, as anticipated, that the retention ratio increases
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with higher infiltration rate and greater ratio of cell area
over drainage area. Figure 3(b) shows that for AR
between 1% and 10%, bioretention performance improves
significantly from low values of RR when the infiltration
rate increases to 20 mm/h. That means that for
applications with AR < 10%, maintaining the infiltration
rate > 20 mm/h is important to ensure an acceptable
performance of bioretention in Hong Kong.
The effect of clogging can also be assessed in Figure 3.
For example, a bioretention system of AR = 4% and k = 40
mm/h is able to retain 50% of annual precipitation. A
degradation of infiltration due to clogging from k = 40
mm/h to 20 mm/h would cause RR to decrease to 40%.
However, a further small degradation from k = 20 mm/h
to 10 mm/h, would result in the same amount of
reduction in RR by 10%.
3.3 Effect of Precipitation on Performance
Within the 10-year period of 2004 2013, Hong Kong
experiences significant fluctuations in the annual
precipitation (Table 1). As such, the performance of
bioretention (RR) varies each year from the 10-year
average. It is worth studying how the performance is
affected by the fluctuation in annual rainfall.
Figure 4 shows the coefficient of correlation between the
yearly values of RR and the annual precipitation depths.
If correlation coefficients > 0.7 is chosen as the threshold
for significant relevance, then there are two regions in
Figure 4 where the bioretention performance is less likely
to be affected by fluctuations in annual precipitation. The
first region is at the left edge of the graph with AR < 3%
and the second region is the upper-right part of Figure
4(a). Referring to Figure 3, the performance of
bioretention is either poor (RR < 0.3) or very good (RR <
0.9) in these two regions.
For the designs of bioretention systems with performance
expected to be affected by annual precipitation variations,
that is, operation with coefficient of correlation > 0.7 in
Figure 4, the change in bioretention performance can be
estimated from the correlation analysis. Figure 5 shows
the predicted change in RR due to an annual precipitation
being greater than the 10-year mean by 1,000 mm. The
predicted changes are negative, meaning that a greater
annual precipitation would result in a smaller retention
ratio for those designs.
For example, a bioretention system of AR = 4%, and k =
40 mm/h is expected to operate with a 10-year average
retention ratio at RR 0.5 (Figure 3(b)). If the annual
precipitation in a particular year is nearly to the 10-year
average value of 2,400mm, the same performance is
expected. However, in a particular year where the annual
precipitation is greater at 3,400 mm (1,000 mm higher),
the bioretention system would operate with a
substantially impaired performance with RR by 0.07 from
0.5, that is RR = 0.43. Similarly, in a year of lower annual
precipitation at 1,400 mm, the bioretention performance
will be better with RR = 0.5+0.07 = 0.57.

Figure 3. (a) 10-year averaged retention ratio for different

infiltration rates and different area ratios of catchment; (b)
Enlarged view at AR < 10%.

Table 1. Annual precipitation depth of Hong Kong

Year Depth (mm) Year Depth (mm)
2004 1743 2009 2186 Figure 4. (a) Coefficient of correlation between retention ratios
2005 3218 2010 2376 and annual precipitation depths over 10-year period; (b) Enlarged
2006 2632 2011 1480 view at AR < 10%.
2007 1711 2012 1929
2008 3071 2013 2624

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research is supported by a Strategic Research
Development Fund of Department of Civil Engineering,
University of Hong Kong.

REFERENCES
Brown R.A. and Hunt W.F. (2012). Improving
bioretention/biofiltration performance with
restorative maintenance. Water Science and
Technology, 65(2), 361-367.
He Z. and Davis A. P. (2011). Process modeling of storm-
water flow in a bioretention cell. Journal of Irrigation
and Drainage Engineering, 137(3), 121-131.
Kim M.H., Sung C.Y., Li M.H. and Chu K.H. (2012).
Bioretention for stormwater quality improvement in
Texas: Removal effectiveness of Escherichia coli.
Separation and Purification Technology, 84, 120-124.
Lam K.M., Li Z.Y. and Cheng C.C.K. (2014).
Performance of bioretention improved with higher
infiltration rate. Int. Conf. Intelligent Systems,
Structures and Facilities: Sustainable Green Intelligent
Buildings, Hong Kong, Jan. 2014, 28-32.
Li H., Sharkey L.J., Hunt W.F. and Davis A.P. (2009).
Mitigation of impervious surface hydrology using
Figure 5. (a) Estimated change of retention ratio RR from 10-year
average resulting from 1000 mm increase in annual precipitation bioretention in North Carolina and Maryland. Journal
from 10-year average; (b) Enlarged view at AR < 10%. of Hydrologic Engineering, 14(4), 407-415.
Li Z.Y. and Lam K.M. (2013). Bioretention with shallow fill
media. Proc. 35th IAHR World Congress, Chengdu,
Sept. 2013, 1-7.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS Nash J.E. and Sutcliffe J.V. (1970). River flow forecasting
This paper presents a statistical method to evaluate the through conceptual models. Part I A discussion of
retention performance of a bioretention system via principles. Journal of Hydrology, 10(3), 282-290.
SWMM modelling under local rainfall conditions. The Prince Georges County. Department of Environmental
retained stormwater volume is estimated by the Resources, Largo, MD (2007). Bioretention Manual.
difference between the modeled precipitation and the
overflow volume accumulated over a long-time period
such as 1 year. A single parameter of retention ratio,
being yearly total retained stormwater volume over total
runoff volume into the system, is used to quantify
statistically the potential benefit of bioretention on
stormwater runoff reduction.
The performance indicator can be used conveniently to
assess the performance of a bioretention system under
different values of subsoil infiltration rate and area ratio
of bioretention cell to catchment. An example of
application is made to Hong Kong conditions using 10-
year rainfall record during 2004 2013. The main
advantage of using the indicator is that the hydrologic
behavior of a bioretention system with various design
parameters can be referred to easily from the contours of
indicator values. In addition, it is also easy to predict the
change in performance due to fluctuations in annual
precipitation value as well as the effect of clogging.
The costs of this estimation include computation time,
knowledge of SWMM model, availability of precipitation
record, and knowledge of stormwater management.
However, there are restrictions in the estimation such as
the retention ratio being applicable only to the region
around the rainfall record station; omission of effective
runoff reduction due to initial abstraction by urban cover,
interception by plants, and other means; and degradation
of the bioretention cell.