Can smart rainwater harvesting schemes result in the improved performance of integrated urban water systems?

Kourosh Behzadian, Zoran Kapelan, Seyed Jamshid Mousavi, Amir Alani
2017 Environmental science and pollution research international  
16 Although rainwater harvesting (RWH) schemes have gradually gained more credibility and popularity 17 in recent times, efficient utilisation and larger scale implementation of multi-purpose RWH is still a 18 challenging task. This paper aims to explore the potential of using smart RWH schemes and their impact 19 on the efficiency improvement in integrated urban water systems (UWS). The smart RWH scheme 20 analysed here is capable of proactively controlling the tank water level to ensure
more » ... ient spare storage 21 is maintained at all times that accommodates the runoff from storm events. The multi-purpose RWH tank 22 can mitigate local floods during rainfall events and supply harvested rainwater to non-potable residential 23 water consumption. Optimal design parameters of the smart RWH scheme is also identified to achieve 24 the best operational performance of the UWS. WaterMet 2 model is used to assess the performance of the 25 UWS with smart RWH schemes. The efficiency of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through 26 modelling a real case of integrated UWS. The results obtained indicate that utilisation of smart RWH 27 with an optimally-sized tank, compared to the corresponding conventional RWH, is able to significantly 28 improve the UWS efficiency in terms of mitigation of local flooding and reliability of water supply from 29 harvested rainwater. 30 31 Keywords: Flood mitigation, rainwater harvesting, smart technologies, urban water systems. 32 33 attention in recent decades as a new alternative resource given increasingly severe droughts, increased 42 water demands and limited potable water resources (Tchobanoglous et al. 2003) . In particular, RWH can 43 the commonly used types of operational policy is regression formula which was used in water resources 132 systems (Karamouz et al. 2003) and urban water supply systems (Rozos and Makropoulos 2013). A 133
doi:10.1007/s11356-017-0546-5 pmid:29086175 fatcat:jqavot27r5e7jmj36qgrgpiuve