Can a fully integrated approach enclose the drainage system design and the flood risk analysis?

In recent years, the Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology has emerged as a pivotal approach for the design and management optimization of infrastructures. The need for fully integrated models has led to develop various tools to support the designers throughout the decision-making process of the entire life cycle of an infrastructure project. In particular, the design of transport infrastructures is a complex process that involves issues concerning all the different fields of civil engineering. In this framework, the BIM method can be efficiently applied to support the project of drainage systems capable of protecting railways and roadways from potential hydraulic risks. According to the above, this study presents an optimized BIM-based methodology for the integrated analysis of the flood risk and the design of the drainage system components. Specifically, the proposed method allows to implement hydraulics and hydrological numerical models as part of the different design phases. Such an approach holds two main advantages for the designer. On one hand, the computational modelling provides a decisive support in both defining water surface profiles over the designed area and identifying the spots exposed to major hydrological risks. On the other hand, the hydraulically guided modelling of each component of the drainage system allows for an increase of the overall productivity and efficiency of the project. A case study is presented to highlight the great potential of the proposed approach in ensuring both the integrity of datasets and the rapid clash detection of critical interferences between each system component. In conclusion, new perspectives about a fully integrated hydraulics analysis in the infrastructures design process are stressed out.