Watershed Reporting, Adaptive Management and Planning System
Creating a First-of-its-kind Web System to Allow MS4s to Perform Complex Calculations, Streamline Annual Reporting and Collaborate on Submittals
End Client: Los Angeles County Flood Control District and City of LA Watershed Protection Division
Paradigm has developed an innovative stormwater tracking and reporting system to be used by 86 municipalities in Los Angeles County. To support the municipalities in LA County with MS4 compliance and reporting, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works (LACDPW) engaged Paradigm to create a first-of-its-kind web system. Paradigm designed a Watershed Reporting Adaptive Management and Planning System (WRAMPS) for LACDPW with two “modules”:
Reporting Module: this module digitizes Word® templates for annual reporting from the state regulatory agency and converts user entries into compiled PDFs with a cover page, signature page, appendices and all the required sections. For watershed groups with multiple municipalities, the module compiles answers from participating agencies and creates compact summary tables. The Module also includes a dashboard to show submittal status and the percent completion for each section. The Reporting Module has greatly reduced the amount of time to generate annual reports, and was successfully used by over 50 cities for the 2015-16 annual report submittal.
Projects Module: this module tracks stormwater projects that have been built in each jurisdiction. Customized pages allow users to enter information for LID projects (developer-built, municipal retrofits or community rain harvesting programs), green streets and regional facilities (e.g., infiltration basins). The landing page for the module includes a vibrant map that displays the projects along with key GIS layers such as watershed boundaries, etc (see screenshot). For each project entered, the system quantifies the potential stormwater capture for an array of conditions and durations: average year, wet year, 85th percentile 24-hour storm event, and others. The stormwater volume captured and treated are estimated using a series of “performance curves” in the back-end based on over 6 million simulations using the USEPA-developed software SUSTAIN (System for Urban Stormwater Treatment and Analysis). Capital construction costs are estimated using local cost data. A dashboard (see screenshot) displays dynamic charts and tables to display the cumulative performance of all the projects in each jurisdiction, organized by project type and watershed. Users can query the projects to display subsets of projects in the dashboard and generate customized PDF reports. The Projects Module is in beta phase, currently released to multiple cities for use and feedback.
WRAMPS is built within an open-source, cloud-based framework: the back-end is PostgreSQL, front-end is Flask and employs the D3 visualization library, and the coding language is Python. All of these components are free for download and heavily supported by the open source community. Hosting is accomplished using Amazon Web Services Elastic Beanstalk. The project is ongoing and includes longterm support and updates such as software patches, help desk support and re-analysis of statistics related to rainfall and hydrology. WRAMPS has already been adopted as an integral part of the MS4 reporting workflow by the County and dozens of cities.
