Effectiveness Evaluation of Best Practice on Mitigating Runoff Contamination at Parking Lots

5. Project Summary: Storm-water runoff discharged from parking lots may carry various pollutants and thus impose water quality impairments to local receiving water. These pollutants may include heavy metals, petroleum compound, sediment, and other exotic compounds, which can vary from location to location depending on the functionality of parking lots. Typically constructed of asphalt or concrete, parking lots are impervious surfaces that route storm-water runoff (carrying pollutants) directly into the storm sewer system. In recent years, porous asphalt and pervious concrete have been increasingly used as low impact development (LID) practices at parking lots due to reduction of storm-water runoff volume and pollutant removal efficacy. However, few field studies have focused on the Alabama’s parking lot systems related to storm-water runoff quality and practices that improve runoff quality. There is an urgent need to identify effective practices in the storm-water runoff discharged from parking lots and understand the factors that affect the water quality. More importantly, there exists a gap in identifying the best practices in mitigating potential contamination from parking lot runoff. The objective of this research project is to recognize toxicity, contaminant in the water discharged from parking lots, and investigate how variations in concentration and period of rainfall have an effect on runoff in the parking lots. This project is also to design and evaluate effective contaminants reduction methods using porous asphalt and permeable concrete. The calculation of accretion rates will be based on designated contaminants over time and throughout discrete time. The variations study in rainfall concentrations and periods affecting the surface of parking lot runoff concentrations to govern similar measures of rainwater cause same contaminant concentrations effects over time.

6. Work Plan: The research project for mitigating practice runoff contamination in the Parking Lots is about ten weeks long. Table 1 below represents all of the tasks that are needed in this research project to be done. Working according to the following time frame would help to complete this project in a timely manner.

Table 1: Work Plan

a.      Training and Literature Review: Describe This Task

            Although there is a grasp on the topic of project and the aim, there is still training requires to ensure that the project proceeds efficiently. Training will help a lot in minimizing risks and threats. With proper training, time will be managed for the next tasks and in the duration, literature on the previous work in the same field will be revealed to get insights on the project. A lot of study is available on the topic but still, it will consume a lot of time to access all the sources and obtain the reliable information. That is why the duration of one week is set to achieve the accurate data.

b.      Identification of Work Scope: Describe This Task

            It is understandable that the work scope is very important in determining the planning of project and listing the deadlines, costs, tasks, goals, and functions of the task. In order to ensure the success of project, it is important to manage the scope properly according to all the parts that must be completed to carry out the project. To plan properly, the time duration of one week has been set. This way, if there are any modifications to occur in the project, they can be managed easily.

c.       Field Work and Laboratory Testing: Describe This Task 

        In order to make sure that the project is achieving success in the field, it is important to carry out the field work. In the part of literature analysis, insights of the field work will be obtained and for carrying out the practical work, laboratory testing is preferred. After all, it is critical to ensure that the contamination is decreased. That is why it is more than just a little significant to use the porous asphalt material to test up to which degree, the contamination can be decreased using it. Once the test seems to deliver favorable outcomes, further stages of the project will be carried out.

d.      Data Analysis: Describe This Task

            Carrying out the field work and laboratory testing, data will be obtained. This data will be useless until it is analyzed properly, compared, and transformed into statements. Analyzing the data is very important to realize just how the overall procedure has complimented the objective of the work. Using different techniques, data will be analyzed and the hypothesis will be justified. It will also tell just why types of adjustments are required to derive the efficient outcome.

e.       Final Report and Paper Writing: Describe This Task 

            Once all the data is analyzed and the hypothetical outcomes are clear. In this part, the final report will be written using the methodology that is chosen for researching, analyzing the literature in the same field, and the data analysis. In the final report, it will be descried whether the hypothesis proved to be accurate or not. In the paper writing, every step that has been taken to carry out the project will be simplified accordingly. 2 weeks will be enough to cover this task.