Understanding the Role of Urban Road Surface Characteristics in influencing Stormwater Quality

Urban road surfaces are one of the most important stormwater pollution sources. Asphalt and concrete road surfaces are typical road types in China and have different characteristics such as roughness, textures and infiltration rates. This could lead to differences of collecting and retaining pollutants. In this context, designing stormwater treatment for different road surfaces respectively is crucial to effectively minimize the stormwater deterioration. This closely depends on an in-depth understanding of stormwater quality characteristics on urban road surfaces. This research study investigated the stormwater quality characteristics on typical asphalt and concrete surfaces. The research outcomes show that road surface characteristics could play a more important role in influencing the resulting stormwater runoff quality than rainfall characteristics. Additionally, asphalt surface due to the relatively rough nature could play a more important role in influencing the overall pollutant export characteristics from urban road surfaces. It is also noted that there are notable differences in pollutant wash-off processes on different surfaces, where the wash-off process on asphalt surfaces tends to be a transport limiting process, while the wash-off process on concrete surfaces tends to be a source limiting process. These results can contribute to stormwater treatment design enhancement for urban roads such as treatment placement, rainfall event selection and water quality estimation.