Most of the existing rainfall runoff models for urban drainage systems have been designed for off-line calculations. With a design storm or a historical rain event and the model system the rainfall runoff processes are simulated, the faster the better. Since very recently, hydrodynamic models have been considered to be much too slow for real time applications. However, with the computing power of today - and even more so of tomorrow - very complex and detailed models may be run on-line and in real time. While the algorithms basically remain the same as for off-line simulations, problems concerning timing, data management and inter process communication have to be identified and solved.
This paper describes the upgrading of the existing hydrodynamic rainfall runoff model HYSTEM/EXTRAN and the decision finding model INTL for real time performance, their implementation on a network of UNIX stations and the experiences from running them within an urban drainage real time control project. The main focus is not on what the models do but how they are put into action and made to run smoothly embedded in all the processes necessary in operational real time control.
