Wallingford Procedure Model

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Wallingford Procedure Model

The Wallingford model is applicable to typical urban catchments in the UK. It uses a regression equation to predict
the runoff coefficient depending on the density of development, the soil type and the antecedent wetness of each
subcatchment.
The model predicts the total runoff from all surfaces in the sub-catchment, both pervious and impervious. This
model should therefore not be mixed with another model within one subcatchment.
This is the standard model used to represent continuing losses for UK urban catchments and is applied with the
initial losses model described previously. Runoff losses are assumed to be constant throughout a rainfall event and
are defined by the relationship:

PR = 0.829 PIMP + 25.0 SOIL + 0.078 UCWI - 20.7

(1)

where
PR - is the percentage runoff
PIMP - is the percentage impermeability. This parameter is the percentage imperviousness of the catchment
obtained by dividing the total directly connected impervious area (both roofs and roads) by the total
contributing area
UCWI - is the Urban Catchment Wetness Index
SOIL - is an index of the water holding capacity of the soil.
The soil index (SOIL) is based on the winter rain acceptance parameter (WRAP) included in the Flood Studies Report
and can be obtained from the revised soil map or from the 1:1000000 version covering the whole of the UK. The
index describes broadly infiltration potential and was derived by a consideration of soil permeability, topographic
slope, and the likelihood of impermeable layers. Five classes of soil are recognised as shown below:
Soil Class

WRAP

Runoff

SOIL

Very high

Very low

0.15

High

Low

0.30

Moderate

Moderate

0.40

Low

High

0.45

Very low

Very high 0.50

Eq. 1 was derived by statistical analysis. The derived relationship explained 57% of the observed variation of PR.
However, when used to predict runoff volume the model provides a far greater explanatory power, as the
variation of runoff volume is influenced markedly by the variation of rainfall volume. In fact, Eq. 1 explains the
variability of runoff volume after the effect of rainfall volume has been removed. This latter point explains to a
certain extent the marked success found in the use of Eq. 1 to predict runoff volume since the release of the
Wallingford Procedure.
Inspection of Eq.1 indicates for low values PIMP, SOIL and UCWI low or even negative values of PR could be
predicted. Consequently, a minimum value of PR of 20% together with a maximum of 100% is defined within the
software. Eq. 1 is therefore used to define PR for separate events within this range. It should be appreciated that
unrealistic PR values can be predicted with low values of SOIL (for example 0.15) in combination with both low
values of PIMP (for example 30%) and UCWI.
This model predicts the total runoff from all surfaces in the sub-catchment, including both pervious and
impervious. The model should therefore not be mixed with another model in one sub-catchment.
Runoff for the entire catchment is distributed between the different surfaces using weighting coefficients. All
surfaces can therefore contribute some runoff even at low runoff rates, provided that initial losses have been
satisfied.
The weighting is carried out as follows:

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Wallingford Procedure Model

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(2)

where:
fiis the weighting coefficient for surface i
PR is the percentage runoff for surface i
i

A is the area for surface i

i

Default parameters for the weighting coefficients are:

Weighting coefficient Surface Value
f1

Paved

1.0

f2

Roofed

1.0

f3

Pervious

0.1

Copyright Innovyze 2012. All rights reserved.

InfoWorks version v13.0 - Issued 23 July 2012.

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3/5/2016