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Improving Stormwater Infrastructure in Northern Virginia
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ason Engineering researchers are studying ways to shore up the stormwater infrastructure in Northern Virginia to protect the region against flooding in the future. The area is growing fast in terms of urbanization and population, and it’s near the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay, which makes it vulnerable to flooding, says Civil Engineering Associate Professor Viviana Maggioni.
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We are looking at how the precipitation is going to change in the next 30 to 50 years and what parts of the area are vulnerable to flooding.
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Stormwater infrastructure is critical for carrying water through an urban area during extreme precipitation events. It includes curbs, gutters, drains, piping, and collection systems such as basins and reservoirs.
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We are developing insights to help decisionmakers build resilient stormwater infrastructure that is still safe under future conditions.
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“The designs for those systems are usually based on historical climate conditions, but we can’t just rely on the past to design stormwater infrastructure anymore because climate variability may be affecting the desired performance of this infrastructure in the future,” says Associate Professor Celso Ferreira. Maggioni, Ferreira and two of their PhD students, as well as several other Mason researchers and regional experts, got involved in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Thriving Earth Exchange project, initiated by the Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC), which
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