Calculation and mapping of rainwater harvesting potential through GIS to conserve water from the roads runoff of Lahore, Pakistan
Paper Details
Calculation and mapping of rainwater harvesting potential through GIS to conserve water from the roads runoff of Lahore, Pakistan
Abstract
More than half of the population is going to be urbanized, by 2025. Currently, Lahore is also going through the phase of rapid population growth and urbanization. Progressive urbanization has increased land impermeability, which is the main cause of reduction in recharging rate of Lahore aquifer. The difference between recharge and discharge from the groundwater is 427 million m3per year. The water table of Lahore is depleting with an average rate of 55cmper annum. If undue extraction of water is continued at present rate without recharging aquifer, the water table depth in many parts of Lahore will be dropped below 70m by the year 2025. Rainwater could be an excellent source of water to feed this depleting aquifer of Lahore. Lahore is suitable for rainwater harvestingwith an average annual rainfall of 715mm.This paper introduces how to calculate rainwater harvesting potential (RWHP) on the selected roads of Lahore by using GIS techniques. ArcMap is used to generate RWHP maps. The total calculated RWHP is 9,280,525m3from 649702m2 areas of roads of Model TownLahore in the year 2017, when an average annual rainfall was 616.82mm. The generated map by GIS has become the strong lobby and advocacy tool to prove that Lahore city has great RWHP through roads runoff. This analysis would be advantageous for future advanced urban runoff simulation by locating RWHP sites on roads. It can also be used to mitigate water borne diseases, urban flooding and heat-islands along with to recharge the aquifer of Lahore.
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Rumana Siddiqui, Saima Siddiqui, Kanwal Javid, M. Ameer Nawaz Akram, 2018. Calculation and mapping of rainwater harvesting potential through GIS to conserve water from the roads runoff of Lahore, Pakistan. J. Biodiv. Environ. Sci., 13(3), 89-97.
Copyright © 2018 by the Authors. This article is an open access article and distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license.