See project website:

http://extdev.cws.oregonstate.edu/drupal_stormwater/

Previous work in Oregon’s small coastal communities identified two primary barriers to adopting low impact development practices:

1) a limited understanding of the relationship between urban development and watershed health, and

2) a lack of capacity for carrying development of a local stormwater management program through to implementation.

To address these issues, we developed SWAMP, an open-source StormWater Assessment and Management decision-support Process. This tool will assist local governments and developers in streamlining adoption of local stormwater management programs and reduce the implementation costs of these programs. In collaboration with several partners (DLCD, DEQ, Institute of Natural Resources, OSU Libraries, South Slough NERR, National NEMO network, OSU Extension and Sea Grant) and related programs, we are integrating education and training programs with the development of an easy-to-use, web-based interface for evaluating and designing stormwater best management practices at the parcel and watershed scales.

This tool will integrate and modify existing modeling strategies used in the City of Portland Stormwater Management Manual (2004), Oregon Land Use Explorer, and the Impervious Surface Analysis Tool (ISAT). After user-defined location and site-specific information is entered, algorithms performed on the back-end of the Oregon Land Use Explorer will be executed, producing reports to document (1) a cross section figure labeled with features of the BMP and calculated dimensions, (2) a brief description of construction considerations and logistics, (3) lists of locally native plants that may be used with the BMP, (4) example costs of the BMP in Oregon, (5) links and references to further outside guidance design documents, and (6) example efficiencies for each BMP.