A considerable amount of knowledge exists for planning, designing, and implementing rural water supply schemes in developing countries around the world. Generic decision support systems (DSS) and techniques are used to tackle the daunting task of providing water in areas that have poor water resources and limited financial capacity. However, there is a lack of site-specific DSS that utilise local hydrological and socio-economic data for assessing regionally-based rural water supply schemes. In the Nilgiris District of South India, an organizational structure exists for improving local water resources through watershed management projects, but many of the tools used to make informed decisions are ineffective, leading to poorly designed systems.
Developing a DSS that uses models applicable to the local conditions, minimizes the need for gathering complex data, and incorporates non-technical factors into the computer algorithms, would greatly improve the process for selecting rural water supply sources in the Nilgiris District. Organising the selection process into a user-friendly computer program would not only benefit the social and economic status of the villages, but also improve the environmental condition of the watershed area.
As a result of the need for an improved organizational structure for rural water supply, a prototype DSS called NRWS (Nilgiris Rural Water Supply) was developed in this research. NRWS aids in the process of identifying key issues in selecting sustainable water sources, and systematically guides the user through various methodologies to quantify the potential water sources. The shell of NRWS is developed through Microsoft® Excel using the Visual Basic for Applications programming language. A user-friendly interface directs the user through the program functions by a network of links and forms. The DSS is divided into six modules that represent different criteria used to evaluate potential water sources: water source yield, capital costs, cost and ease of operation and maintenance, impact of development, political and legal constraints, and water quality. The criteria are organized in a decision matrix that provides a total score and rank for each potential water source. There are many different sources that can be used to supply water for domestic use, but only five are considered for NRWS due to their popularity within the Nilgiris District: rooftop rainwater harvesting, check dams, reservoirs, springs, and dug wells.
The development of simulation models within the water source yield module for the rainwater harvesting and check dam sources involved gathering local hydrological data. An extensive database of precipitation data was developed for the Nilgiris District, including 19 rain gauge stations spread evenly across the district. It was discovered that three distinct precipitation regions exist which are influenced to a different degree by the dominant northeast and southwest monsoon periods. As such, point precipitation data for villages throughout the district were calculated based on their location within one of the three regions. The methodology used for developing streamflow was analyzing the baseflow recession constant during the dry season. Since it is only during the dry season that streamflow is significantly reduced, the critical factor is assessing the rate at which flow decreases.
A general application of the rooftop rainwater harvesting simulation was applied to ten villages throughout the Nilgiris Distract. One important discovery was that the village of Masinigudi, which lies in a rain shadow and receives the lowest level of annual rainfall in the district, performed to the same level as villages with a high annual rainfall. Since the region surrounding Masinigudi is deprived of water sources such as mountain streams and dug wells, rainwater harvesting may be a feasible and economically viable solution. Next, the entire DSS was applied to a specific case in the Emerald Valley village within the Red Hill micro-watershed. Three sources were considered including rainwater harvesting, check dam, and reservoir. After completing the DSS and viewing the decision matrix, it was found that the check dam source was the most feasible source to implement. The significant factors influencing the decision were a low capital cost and higher water quality level.
Water resources rely on a fine ecological balance to ensure a sustainable supply is available to future generations. Over the past fifty years, this balance has not been achieved in India with water resources showing rapid signs of depletion. The total renewable freshwater available in India dropped from 5277 m3/person/year in 1951 to 1342 m3/person/year in 2000: where a condition of scarcity is considered to be below one-thousand m3/person/year (Lal, 2002). The government should play a central role in developing effective management tools that promote better decision-making in meeting the basic water needs of the people, while ensuring the longevity of India’s water resources. As more strain is placed on river systems due to increased demand and industrial uses, coordinated activities are crucial to understanding the real impacts and developing a proactive plan for sustainability. The development of NRWS will hopefully provide an organizational structure that enables decision-makers to understand the impacts associated with different actions related to local water resources. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/30054 |
| Date | 04 1900 |
| Creators | Olsen, Daniel |
| Contributors | Baetz, Brian, Civil Engineering |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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