• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.393-400
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• 2017

One of the big problems facing municipalities is the management and control of urban flooding where urban drainage systems are under growing pressure due to increases in urbanization, population and changes in the climate. Urban flooding causes environmental and infrastructure damage, especially to roads, this damage increasing maintenance costs. The aim of the present study is to develop a decision support tool to identify the performance of storm networks to address future risks associated with climate change in the Middle East region and specifically, illegal sewer connections in the storm networks of Karbala city, Iraq. The storm water management model has been used to simulate Karbala's storm drainage network using continuous hourly rainfall intensity data from 2008 to 2016. The results indicate that the system is sufficient as designed before consideration of extra sewage due to an illegal sewer connection. Due to climate changes in recent years, rainfall intensity has increased reaching 33.54 mm/h, this change led to flooding in 47% of manholes. Illegal sewage will increase flooding in the storm system at this rainfall intensity from between 39% to 52%.