Abstract
Flash floods are highly devastating, however there is no effective management for their water in Saudi Arabia, therefore, it is crucial to adopt Rainfall Water Harvesting (RWH) techniques to mitigate the flash floods and manage the available water resources from the infrequent and rare rainfall storms. The goal of this study is to create a potential flood hazard map and a map of suitable locations for RWH in Wadi Nisah, Saudi Arabia for future water management and flood prevention plans and to identify potential areas for rainwater harvesting and dam construction for both a flood mitigation and water harvesting. This research was carried out using a spatiotemporal distributed model based on multi-criteria decision analysis by combining Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), and Multi-Criteria Decision-Making tools (MCDM). The flood hazard mapping criteria were elevation, drainage density, slope, direct runoff depth at 50 years return period, Topographic witness index, and Curve Number, according to the Multi-criteria decision analysis, while the criteria for RWH were Slope, Land cover, Stream order, Lineaments density, and Average of annual max-24hr Rainfall. The weight of each criteria was estimated based on Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). In multi-criteria decision analysis, 21.55 % of the total area for Wadi Nisah was classified as extremely dangerous and dangerous; 65.29 % of the total area was classified as moderate; and 13.15 % of the total area was classified as safe and very safe in flash flood hazard classes. Only 15% of Wadi Nisah has a very high potentiality for RWH and 27.7%, 57.31% of the basin has a moderate and a low or extremely low potentiality of RWH, respectively. According to the developed RWH potentiality map, two possible dam sites were proposed. The maximum height of the proposed dams, which corresponded to the cross section of dam locations, ranged from 6.2 to 9 meters; the maximum width of dams ranged from 573.48 to 725 meters; the maximum storage capacity of reservoirs, which corresponded to the distribution of topographic conditions in the surrounding area, ranged from 3976104.499 m3 to 4328509.123 m3; and the maximum surface area of reservoirs ranged from 1268372.625 m2 to 1505825.676.14 m2. These results are highly important for the decision makers for not only flash flood mitigation but also water management in the study area.
Designating Appropriate Areas for Determining Potential Rainwater Harvesting in Arid Region Using a GIS-based Multi-criteria Decision Analysis
