Potential Benefits from Sharing Rainwater Storages Depending on Characteristics in Demand

Water

Yongwon Seo²  Sun Young Park³  Young-Oh Kim¹ 

[1] Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742, Korea; E-Mail:;Department of Civil Engineering, Yeungnam University, 280 Daehak-ro, Gyeongsan 712-749, Korea;Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: rainwater harvesting system;    sharing rainwater harvesting system;    demand characteristics;    reliability;    resiliency;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w7031013

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

A rainwater harvesting system (RWHS) is an alternative water resource that collects and stores rainwater from rooftops. It helps smooth out variations in water supply and sustainable water resources management. In this study, we investigated the potential benefits from sharing RWHS with nearby neighbors in a community. We introduced different mean, variance, and correlation in water demand for each water user. A simple case of a community composed of four prospective users is introduced to investigate the benefit from sharing RWHSs. Using the historical rainfall records from four catchments in South Korea, a storage-reliability-yield analysis is applied to obtain the required storage and corresponding reliability for a given yield ratio. The results indicate that the required total storage is reduced when RWHSs are shared among users and the rate of reduction is proportional to the degree of sharing. The required total storage was reduced down to 61% compared to the original storage when RWHSs are shared for a target reliability of 80%. The benefit from sharing also depends on the demands, which are different among users. Test cases with different means and variances as well as correlation disclose the conditions when the benefit from sharing RWHSs is maximized. The result showed that difference in mean and variance additionally reduces the required storage up to 3% and correlation in demand also as much affects the required storage.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.