Abstract

This necessarily brief review features a few highlights from the perspective of an academic marginally involved in the development of SWMM. As a historical sketch it is admittedly poor, covering only what the writer considers to be a few central activities. It was written to help new users understand the peculiarities of the code and manuals, and to plot a path through part of the confusing serial literature. Textbooks, manuals and reports are not covered.

Most urban stormwater code has been written and distributed for commercial reasons. The development of SWMM, its ancestry and its continuing support, on the other hand, is probably unique. Apart from intermittent support of the USEPA, research groups at several different universities, including those of the author, the University of Florida, and Oregon State University, and engineers at agencies and in consulting offices, have spasmodically contributed ideas or more materially to the evolution of SWMM.

The SWMM environment is a natural consequence of active participation in scientific, technical and engineering conferences, symposia, seminars, workshops and other meetings. Besides workshops and short courses given by (i) the University of Florida, (ii) the USEPA, and (iii) the writer, the more common meetings include:

1.An approximately biennial series of Specialty and Engineering Foundation conferences (both involving the Urban Water Resources Research Council of the American Society of Civil Engineers or ASCE);

2. A series of regular international conferences every three years and;

3. Irregular six-monthly user group conferences in the US and Canada, whose papers are listed at the end of the chapter.

A study of the lists of committee members, invited speakers, authors of papers, and the content of some papers, will inevitably detect some repetition and find a remarkable amount of consistency over the years. Fortunately other consulting engineers, planners, geographers, aquatic biologists and related professionals concerned with urban development and its impact on aquatic environments have contributed equally to the rich literature.

Since the proceedings of the water quality management modellers user conferences are generally more difficult to locate in libraries or elsewhere, this review includes a list of most of the papers presented in that series. The papers cover many topics of intense interest to readers of these proceedings, and nicely encapsulate the changing emphasis over the past two decades. Topics range from concerns with water flows in a remote batch mainframe environment, to interdisciplinary ecosystems concerns in the evolving networked-workstation design environment. A crude guide to the papers

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