Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the characterization of urban runoff quality constituents. Characterization includes descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, frequency analysis and regression analysis of event mean concentrations of various quality constituents from separated and combined sewer catchments. Emphasis is placed on the procedures required to determine not only summary statistics but also complete descriptions in the form of probability density functions. Metropolitan Toronto runoff quality databases are used to illustrate these procedures. The event mean concentrations of fifteen quality constituents representing chemical and bacteriological pollutants, nutrients and heavy metals were studied. Three probability distributions (exponential, gamma and lognormal) were fitted to the data and goodness-of-fit was assessed using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. In many studies, the lognormal probability distribution has been assumed to describe the runoff quality constituents. However, in this study, in addition to the lognormal distribution, it is observed that gamma and exponential probability distributions can also adequately describe runoff quality constituents.

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