Agentic SWMM: Auditable and Reproducible Stormwater Modelling Workflow with Agent Skills and Model Context Protocol
Configuring urban hydrological models, such as the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM), for operational use remains onerous for many modellers. We propose aiswmm, a SWMM-specialized agentic runtime, together with an Agentic SWMM workflow that embeds (Agent) Skills and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools to automate QGIS preprocessing, SWMM configuration, execution, and postprocessing. We demonstrate this natural-language triggered workflow on the Tod Creek watershed (located on the Saanich Peninsula, British Columbia). We also validate the proposed Agentic SWMM workflow at three levels: (i) a QGIS-based watershed-pour-point detection that agrees with the commercial PCSWMM® method to within 0.88% of the watershed perimeter (approximately 7.5 pixels in the digital elevation model); (ii) byte-identical SWMM output files (Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit identical) between the command-line execution and the MCP paths across 60 paired simulations, and (iii) peak inflow at the watershed outlet matching to three significant digits between the manual SWMM interface and Agentic SWMM workflows. The results confirm that Agentic SWMM workflow can produce the same outputs with the manual SWMM interface, as they are designed to use the same computational engine. We also propose a verification-first contract and byte-level audit chain that record the inputs, parameters, and outputs of each run, thereby supporting the auditability and reproducibility. The aiswmm runtime, Skills, MCP servers, and byte-level audit chain are released as open source and remain compatible with mainstream agentic runtimes (Codex, Claude Code, Hermes, and OpenClaw) to support reproducible SWMM modelling driven by natural language.
Authors
- Caterina Valeo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4056-8632)
- Zhonghao Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6253-6380)
Institutions
- University of Victoria (CA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- AI for Engineering
- Published
- 2026-06-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/aieng1010005
- Primary Topic
- Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- University of Victoria
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada