Rainwater Harvesting Using Recorded and Hypothetical Rainfall Data Scenarios

Macro Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) under recorded and forecasting rainfall scenarios helps to overcome the water shortage problem. Eastern Sinjar District-Iraq had been investigated for the potential of RWH with a catchment area of four basins. Three recorded rainfall scenarios (S1, S2, and S3) were diagnosed representing seasons of the maximum, minimum and average weekly rainfall events for the period 1990-2011. Forecasting the rainfall depths for the same catchment area were estimated depending on Box-Jenkins methodology to build Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models for weekly rainfall data for the period 2012-2016. Three forecasting rainfall scenarios (S4, S5, and S6) were diagnosed to represent the seasons of the maximum, minimum and average weekly forecasting rainfall events. The results of these scenarios were compared with an average area to be irrigated obtained from the results of 19 years record. The results indicated that in wet years RWH technique with supplemental irrigation help to give total irrigated area larger than a total specified average irrigated area. In average and dry years, the amounts of the additional needed water were estimated to irrigate the total areas that should be increase in order to satisfy the specified average irrigated area.