Development and evaluation of a Sustainable Drainage System module into TEB (v 9.0) model

Tunqui Neira, José Manuel; Chancibault, Katia; Gromaire, Marie-Christine; Chebbo, Ghassan

doi:10.5194/egusphere-2025-2831

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https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2831

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29 Sep 2025

| 29 Sep 2025

Development and evaluation of a Sustainable Drainage System module into TEB (v 9.0) model

José Manuel Tunqui Neira, Katia Chancibault, Marie-Christine Gromaire, and Ghassan Chebbo

Abstract. Addressing urban stormwater management challenges, this study integrates a novel Sustainable Drainage System (SUDS) module into the Town Energy Balance (TEB) model to enhance urban hydro energetic simulations. The SUDS module is developed using the Equivalent Sustainable Drainage System (E–SUDS) approach, which aggregates various SUDS based on their hydrological processes and compatibility with TEB, providing a simplified representation for large-scale urban models. This study successfully develops this module, focusing on the hydrological conceptualization tailored to specific SUDS processes. A rigorous evaluation was conducted, including a comparison with the bioretention module of the SWMM model, to validate the accuracy of hydrological process dynamics and water balance simulated by the TEB SUDS module. The initial results demonstrated that the TEB SUDS module effectively simulates most of the targeted hydrological processes and the key parameters involved in water balance calculations. This module offers a comprehensive tool for analysing the cumulative and spatial effects of different SUDS at an urban scale.

Received: 30 Aug 2025 – Discussion started: 29 Sep 2025

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José Manuel Tunqui Neira, Katia Chancibault, Marie-Christine Gromaire, and Ghassan Chebbo

Status: final response (author comments only)

RC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-2831', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Nov 2025
Reviewing of the manuscript ‘Development and evaluation of a Sustainable Drainage System module into TEB (V9.0) model’ by Jose Manuel Tunqui Neira et al. (2025) submitted to Geoscientific Model Development (Manuscript ID: egusphere-2025-2831).

This work focuses on incorporate more elaborate urban drainage system SUDS module into the popular TEB model to better represent the hydrological processes under the combined climate change and anthropogenic effects. The authors have shown the equations and diagrams related to the SUDS module in a detailed and well represented way. The methodology and presentation are well defined, clearly stated, and properly validated. The work would be great beneficial to the hydro-climate modeling community. Therefore, I would recommend it be published after Minor Revision. The following are specific comments and suggestions that may help improve the manuscript quality:

The reviewer would suggest reducing the amount of abbreviations in this section unless they are necessary. In addition, the abbreviation should be given its full name so that the readers are easy to follow, e.g., SWMM.

Starting from this Section and the following Sections, the authors please consider keeping some space at the start of the new paragraph, or keeping some line space between the last paragraph and the following one. By doing so, the readers could better follow the meaning of the represented contents in a coherent way.

Line 21: ‘…… SUDS are ……’ may change to ‘…… SUDS is ……’.

Line 44: ‘…… SUDS model’ may change to ‘SUDS module ……’.

Line 61: Please add the full name of TEB, I guess ‘Town Energy Balance’, when it is first appeared.

Line 71: ‘The project’s objective …..’. In this manuscript intending for publication, the authors may better focus on the manuscript or this article’s objective.

Line 190: ‘Table 1 …… Figure 1 [and] Figure 2’.

Line 197: ‘…… portion of the mesh (Figure A.1 in Appendix A) ……’. Adding a bracket before ‘Figure A.1’.

Line 205: Is it proper to adding Figure 3 in the Section’s title? Please consider revising it.

The subsection’s title may better be more detailed. For example, ‘Section 4.4.1 Scenario 1 and Section 4.4.2 Scenario 2’ could not provide sufficient information for the readers to follow this article and the following contents under these subsections. Please consider revise it.

The percolations and exfiltration in Figure 5 and those corresponding yellow dots in Figure 7 show some abnormal results. For example, the E-SUDSSa at 25 mm/h while the LID-SWMM could range from 0-25 mm/h. Could you explain it and the similar issues in these two figures? Could the module be fixed to be better consistent between SWMM and TEB models for the SUDS hydrological processes?

The values at the left panels of Figure 6 and 8 may be changed to be in a more formal way.

This part should be revised. Firstly, the future research direction may be switched to somewhere else. Then, the results of this work better be summarized in the form of listing bulletin points, e.g., (1) ….., (2), ….. (3)….. etc. Instead of put all together.

For the validation of the new module results, more statistical or skill metrics should be included, in addition to R2. For example, root-mean-square error, mean bias, relative bias, total sample number, and others etc. Please consider adding them to evaluate the model performance more carefully.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2831-RC1
RC2:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-2831', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Dec 2025
The article presents a new module to simulate sustainable drainage system (SUDS) into the Town Energy Balance (TEB) model. The model simulations are compared to the simulations of other models or versions considered as reference under two scenarios.
The article is generally clear and well presented.
However one can regret that the evaluation remains in a pure modelling world (if I understood well), evaluating whether the proposed model is able to mimic the outputs of another model. Thus it is difficult to evaluate whether the proposed model can be trusted: the convergence with the outputs of the reference model only indicates that the two models compared are consistent, not that they are reliably simulating actual fluxes and states variables that could be observed in the real world. I am somewhat troubled by the fact that new models can be proposed in the literature without being tested against observations. And if there are no observations available to test these models, does that mean they cannot be falsified, in Popper's sense? This would be a problem I think. If complex models cannot be evaluated, how can we trust them? I find this is a strong limitation of this article. Or maybe I missed something.
This limitation should be more clearly stated, acknowledged and discussed in the abstract, discussion and conclusion of the paper. Else the reader may consider this as a proof of acceptability of the model, which I find it is not.
Some results shown in the article also exhibit unexpected behaviour (at least for me) that could be further analysed.
Detailed comments
Abstract: As mentioned in my comments above, the abstract should more clearly state that the evaluation is limited to a synthetic world. Lines 11 or 14 oversell model results and are misleading in that sense.

Section 3: It would be useful to have a table summarizing all the state variables and parameters used in Eqs. 1 to 27 (maybe in the appendix), with units, ranges, etc. This would be helpful for the reader (at least for me).

Section 4: I did not find how model warm-up was done. Incorrect model initialization may create strong modelling errors. This should be clarified.

Eq. 33: PBIAS criterion is often defined as the opposite (sim – ref). Please clarify what was actually used here and check criteria were consistently computed.

Fig. 5: There are strange behaviours on some graphs with accumulations of points around some specific values (mostly horizontal or vertical structures). It means that one simulation is almost constant when the other is not. Where does this come from? Is it expected and realistic? Were corresponding time series checked visually to better understand these behaviours?

Fig. 7: Same comment. Here there are also graphical structures which are not vertical, but showing some apparent thresholds. How can this be explained? In such cases of discrepancy, probably at least one model is strongly false though it is not possible to say which one. So how can we conclude in these cases. This is a real problem for the evaluation process presented here.

Building on the two previous comments, are there specific conditions where the two simulations differ most?

Discussion and conclusion: See major comment above.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2831-RC2

José Manuel Tunqui Neira, Katia Chancibault, Marie-Christine Gromaire, and Ghassan Chebbo

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Short summary

We developed and evaluated a computer model that supports sustainable urban stormwater management. It simulates how green areas and drainage systems capture, store, and release rainwater, and performs well when compared with an established model. The results show it can reliably reproduce key water processes, providing a practical tool to help improve urban rainwater management.


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