Probability mass first flush evaluation for combined sewer discharges

The Korea government has put in a lot of e ort to construct sanitation facilities for controlling non-point source pollution. The first flush phenomenon is a prime example of such pollution. However, to date, several serious problems have arisen in the operation and treatment e ectiveness of these facilities due to unsuitable design flow volumes and pollution loads. It is di cult to assess the optimal flow volume and pollution mass when considering both monetary and temporal limitations. The objective of this article was to characterize the discharge of storm runo pollution from urban catchments in Korea and to estimate the probability of mass first flush (MFFn) using the storm water management model and probability density functions. As a result of the review of gauged storms for the representative using probability density function with rainfall volumes during the last two years, all the gauged storms were found to be valid representative precipitation. Both the observed MFFn and probability MFFn in BE-1 denoted similarly large magnitudes of first flush with roughly 40% of the total pollution mass contained in the first 20% of the runo . In the case of BE-2, however, there were significant di erence between the observed MFFn and probability MFFn.