An expert system to evaluate the sensitivity of urban areas to the functioning failure of storm drainage networks

To improve the efficiency of storm drainage networks, many local authorities have invested in network upgrading projects. Many upgrading alternatives can be generated for a given problem. It is the designer's responsibility to choose among the available alternatives. The main objective of the upgrade designs is to reduce flooding of urban areas during extreme storm events. This paper presents an expert system based on fuzzy inference to evaluate the sensitivity of urban areas to network failure. The produced results allow the designer to classify various network upgrading alternatives according to their impacts on urban areas and to introduce this order in a multi-criteria method. A practical application of the expert system is given and its applicability is discussed.