INFRASTRUCTURE ASSEMBLAGE UNITS FOR GALENA PARK ANALYSIS

& PLANNING

“As one of the world’s largest collections of petrochemical complexes, Harris County, TX, faces public health concerns from the transfer of hazardous substances and increasingly severe flooding. Toxic metals discharged from industrial land uses can be transmitted through flood water to residential areas and deposited in soil. Green infrastructure (GI) is an effective solution to reducing flooding, pollutant load, and the amount of hazardous substance transferal during flood events. In fully developed areas with limited onground undeveloped spaces and complex underground utilities (like pipes and cables that transport electricity, natural gas, water, sewage, and telecommunications), these problems can, however, be more difficult to alleviate than in less developed areas.

The implementation of GI in retrofit projects to reduce flooding and contamination is a significant challenge in space-constrained and overly developed communities which also have complex underground utility systems. To respond to this challenge, we developed an adaptive and flexible GI toolkit that can be applied broadly, based on both on-ground spatial size and underground depth to existing infrastructure. The uniqueness of this project lies in its use of Delft3D-FM (for Flexible Mesh) coupled with the Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Assessment Low Impact Development (L-THIA) model to project the probable impacts of the master plan/toolkit application on flood and contamination levels. Overall, the design adds decreases stormwater runoff by 12.4% and pollutant load by 12.1%, annually.