IDEAL (Integrated Design, Evaluation, and Assessment of Loadings) was originally developed to enable designers to comply with anti-degradation restrictions for impaired waters, and has since grown into a versatile, first-of-its-kind, post-construction stormwater quality model for low impact development (LID) design. IDEAL allows a designer to create both green infrastructure and traditional stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) in any series of treatments to calculate their effectiveness at removing stormwater pollutants (sediment, bacteria, nitrogen, and phosphorus) and volume. No other tool gives a designer more flexibility or accuracy in implementing LID techniques to control runoff volume and quality. IDEAL was designed to be used in a wide variety of applications including site development permitting, assessing BMP retrofits, and small watershed modeling.
IDEAL’s runoff and treatment algorithms are process-based, predicting runoff rates and pollutant loads while also routing these loadings through BMPs using technologies that have been experimentally validated. Pollutant trapping in BMPs is computed using isothermic relationships along with accepted decay, settling, and infiltration methods. IDEAL calculates trapping for each BMP individually, based on the inflow and that BMP’s specific characteristics, and reports trapping efficiency, total load, load reductions, and other information for each BMP and the modeled area as a whole. IDEAL can be used to meet any post-construction permit requirement, including percent reduction of constituents, “post vs. pre” or anti-degradation requirements, or specific constituent loading rates. BMPs available in IDEAL include dry detention ponds, wet detention ponds, vegetative filter strips, bioswales, enhanced bioswales, infiltration trenches, porous pavement, sand filters, bioretention cells, cisterns, and manufactured treatment devices.
This program is the culmination of decades of projects, research, and programming performed for various federal, state, and local governments. IDEAL was initially developed for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control's Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (SCDHEC-OCRM). This program is the result of engineers and Ph.D.'s addressing clients' needs and desires related to water resource issues. The primary developers of IDEAL are Dr. Bill Barfield and Dr. John Hayes.
Dr. Bill Barfield, PE, PhD
Bill Barfield is responsible for leading the software development for IDEAL. He has a Ph.D. in Civil and Agricultural Engineering at Texas A&M and has served as a professor at the University of Kentucky and Oklahoma State University. At Kentucky, he led the Water Resource Institute and the university-wide graduate program in Environmental Systems. At Oklahoma State University, he headed the Department of Bio-Systems Engineering while directing the Manufacturing Engineering Extension program and the New Product Development Center. He is a diplomat of the American Water Resources Engineers and a fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. He is the author of 20 books and book chapters as well as more than 130 journal articles.
Dr. John Hayes, PE, PhD
Dr. John C. Hayes was a professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Clemson University and is now a professor emeritus with Clemson University Extension Service. He has also served as associate dean for Environmental Conservation and department chair of the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Clemson University. Dr. Hayes was formerly an assistant professor at Mississippi State University and a research specialist at the University of Kentucky. He holds a Ph.D. (1979) from the University of Kentucky and an M.S. (1976) and B.S. (1974) from Clemson University. He is co-author of Hydrology and Sedimentology of Small Catchments and numerous journal articles, proceedings papers, and book chapters. Dr. Hayes led the development and implementation of Clemson's award winning certification program for erosion prevention and sediment control inspectors in addition to the certification program for plan reviewers. He also co-developed the S.C. Design Aids and other techniques that are widely used for design of erosion and sediment controls.