[01] Kuldeep Pareta, DHI (India) Water & Environment Pvt Ltd., New Delhi, India. [02] Shirish Baviskar, Willis Towers Watson, Thane (West), Maharashtra, India.

Regions with immense variation in the rainfall and unforeseeable droughts or floods often affect people with severe water scarcity and insecure livelihoods. Many parts of India are affected by acute water shortage mainly due to the lack of sufficient mechanisms to harvest the rainwater that flows away as runoff. Rainwater harvesting (RWH) act as an effective tool to prevail over the disparity between water demand and supply by augmenting the groundwater and surface water supply under the climate change conditions. RWH systems enhance the sustainability of water supplies by recycling and reducing the runoff discharges thus maintaining the quality of water. In the semi-arid and arid regions, identification of suitable sites for rainwater harvesting of the major steps taken to enhance the availability of water and productivity of the land. Chennai is one among the water-scarce regions in India deprived of freshwater resources along with the deterioration in the surface and sub-surface water quality. Currently, Chennai city does not receive the annual rainfall due to climate change variability. The study was conducted to demarcate favorable locations for RWH structures in the Chennai basin, Tamil Nadu using GIS to provide sustainable solutions to minimize the impacts on water scarcity. The optimum sites of rainwater harvesting were identified by the weighted overlay analysis in ArcGIS 10.7.1 software. Hydraulic structures such as farm ponds, percolation tanks, subsurface dykes, check dams and recharge pits were proposed for the augmentation of surface and groundwater resources in the Chennai basin. It has been concluded that remote sensing and GIS offer a wonderful tool for implementing rainwater harvesting technologies on a wider scale.

Hydro-geomorphology, Water Scarcity, RWH, Hydraulic Structure, Chennai Basin, RS/GIS

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