Improving the Sustainability of Urban Water Management through Innovative Groundwater Recharge System (GRS)

Abstract

Negative impacts of groundwater overuse have always been one of the problems of modern cities in arid and semi-arid regions; rapid population growth and climate change have also exacerbated these problems in many areas. One of the best approaches to deal with the impacts of these phenomena (soil subsidence, decline in groundwater quality, and seawater intrusion) is to artificially recharge water into aquifers and raise the groundwater level. In this paper, an innovative solution called Groundwater Recharge Systems (GRS) is proposed with high efficiency, low cost, and fast implementation capability to address these problems. The proposed solution also has the capability of being constructed in urban environments without the need to allocate any spacious land or the need to use any sophisticated technologies. The study of implementing the proposed groundwater recharge systems in the study area showed that the performance of this system, even in worst-case scenarios, will be very significant even considering climate change impacts such as seawater level rise and decline in precipitation.