Author(s): Sara Nazif; Mohammad Karamouz; Hamed Tavakoli Far
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Drought planning; Urban water; System dynamics; Demand management
Abstract: Occurrence of drought with higher frequency and more intense effects than what has been experienced in the past could be due to climate change phenomenon. Dramatic growth of urban water demand in developing countries has also increased worries about securing minimum level of water supply in urban areas during the low flow seasons. Developing and utilizing the specialized tools and models to evaluate and mitigate the shortage of water supply in drought periods can help in making reasonable decisions. In this study, a model is developed to evaluate solutions for drought planning in an urban area. The proposed model simulates the trend of urban water consumption by considering the impacts of climatic and economic factors on water demand using a system dynamic approach. The demand management policies are selected based on their ability to fill the gap between expected water supply and predicted demands. The optimal solutions should minimize cost while maintaining enough reservoir storage. The selected policies are categorized based on their effectiveness for mitigating the drought impacts. The proposed algorithm is applied for drought planning of Tehran metropolitan area, the capital of Iran. The water supply system of this mega city includes three reservoirs and groundwater resource with a total of 1000 MCM water consumption per year. The result shows the ability of the proposed algorithm to suggest the solutions which are highly effective in demand management especially in drought contingency plans.
Year: 2009