InfilAudit: Clogging Health Score for Stormwater Infiltration Assets
A standardized field audit and scoring service that measures how clogged infiltration basins, bioswales and permeable-pavement subgrades really are, ranking each asset for rehabilitation so stormwater owners spend maintenance money where it restores capacity.
Concept
InfilAudit is a field audit kit plus scoring service for owners of infiltration-based stormwater assets — infiltration basins, bioswale subgrades, permeable-pavement storage layers. Crews run one prescribed protocol drawn from the soil-structure assessment reference methods: standardized site and soil description; morphology of the surface layer where clogging develops; sampling for soil structure measurement; water and air flow parameters measured on the clogged layer and the subsoil beneath it; and soil strength & stability tests. The service converts these into a per-asset Clogging Health Score — remaining infiltration capacity relative to as-built, plus depth and strength of the clogged layer — and a ranked rehabilitation action (scarify/till the surface, replace upper media, full rebuild). Because every crew applies the same reference methods, scores are comparable across an entire portfolio of assets built by different contractors over different years, and defensible when a regulator asks whether an asset still performs.
Why now
The new compendium [0] assembles the complete measurement chain in one citable place — site & soil description, sampling for structure measurement, structural parameters, water & air flow parameters, and soil strength & stability — so a portfolio-wide audit can be run as a single standardized protocol instead of ad hoc, per-contractor tests. The audit design must also respect what the older corpus establishes: spatial soil variation is real but hard to identify, so uncertainty has to be quantified rationally through the sampling plan [1], and soil behavior fundamentals supply the correlations used to interpret structure and flow measurements [2]. The theme brief identifies clogging as the binding constraint on stormwater filtration efficiency (the media-depth vs. clogging trade-off) and lists a clogging predictor as an open gap; this audit is the measurement layer that produces the flow-parameter data such prediction and O&M decisions need.
Written by GLM · 10 Oct 2026
AI assessment
A highly focused, evidence-backed service that turns a complex academic measurement chain into a practical O&M tool for municipal stormwater assets.
- Evidence strength 5/5
- The idea directly operationalizes the 'Soil Structure Assessment' reference methods and integrates the necessary stochastic soil variation and behavioral fundamentals from the other cited sources.
- Market pull 4/5
- Municipalities and engineering firms (like Arcadis/Stantec) face significant pressure to maintain green infrastructure performance for regulatory compliance, creating a clear budget for standardized auditing.
- Novelty & moat 4/5
- While a 'Clogging-Regime Monitor' exists for telemetry-based tracking, this is a distinct physical audit and scoring service for a broader range of assets (basins, swales, pavements).
- Feasibility 4/5
- The methodology is already documented in the reference methods; the MVP is essentially a standardized field kit and a scoring calculator.
- Wedge clarity 5/5
- The 'Clogging Health Score' is a sharp, specific output that provides immediate value for prioritizing maintenance spend.
- Simplicity / focus 5/5
- The product is a single, well-defined service (audit + score) rather than an over-scoped platform.
Scored by Gemma 4 · 10 Oct 2026. Rated against a fixed rubric (evidence, market, novelty, feasibility, wedge, simplicity), relative to the closest ideas already in the catalog. A prior estimate to compare ideas before real-world signal arrives.
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Who benefits
- Philadelphia Water Departmentorganization
Runs the Green City Clean Waters program with thousands of green stormwater assets; a comparable clogging score across all of them lets a limited O&M crew prioritize which basins to rehabilitate each season.
- Melbourne Waterorganization
Manages stormwater quality and waterway health obligations across an extensive portfolio of infiltration and treatment assets; portfolio-wide infiltration health scores directly support its asset renewal planning.
- Arcadiscompany
Holds municipal stormwater and green-infrastructure O&M frameworks globally; a standardized, repeatable audit protocol lets it deliver the same defensible service line across many clients.
- Stanteccompany
Designs and manages SuDS portfolios for cities; a reference-method-based clogging diagnostic differentiates its O&M and asset-management offering with measurable evidence.
- Environment Agencyorganization
As England's flood-risk and SuDS regulator it must judge whether adopted drainage assets still function; an audit built on published reference methods gives it an objective performance-evidence standard.
Research it builds on
- Fundamentals of Soil BehaviorJames K. Mitchell, Kenichi Soga, Catherine O’Sullivan · 2025 · 3023 citationsAll ideas from this paper →
- Estimation for Stochastic Soil ModelsGordon A. Fenton · 1999 · 262 citationsAll ideas from this paper →
- Soil Structure AssessmentWalter W. Burke, D. Gabriëls, Johan Bouma · 2026 · 152 citationsAll ideas from this paper →