Urban Rain Water

Harvesting
In urban India, Roof Top Rain
Water harvesting is the most
common practice especially for
domestic purpose. The advantages
of adopting this technique are the
minimum
requirement
of
investment, applicability at small
scale as well as large scale and
minimum
requirement
of
expertise. The water collected on
the roof top can be used in multifold ways, it could either be used for ground water recharging or
for direct consumption. The given picture illustrates the procedure of roof top rain water
harvesting.

Bangalore case study

The southern part of Karnataka incorporates Bangalore which is one of the regions under normal
rain fall. The annual rain fall in Bangalore is 970mm which occurs from April to November. From
1984 till present day the annual rain fall has remained consistent but with the increase in
population every year Bangalore has started facing water scarcity issues.
The following graph shows the average rain fall in Bangalore.

It was observed that population grew up to 1000000 in 2007 from 290000 in 1980. This
tremendous increment resulted in devastating effect on water availability in the city and the per

capita availability of water dropped down to 1000 meter cubic in 2010 from 2000 meter cubic in
1991. This resulted in an annual demand supply gap of 49.28 billion liters of water. Rain water
harvesting project in Bangalore was proposed in the year 2011. The following chart describes the
details of the project.

Chennai case study

Chennai receives an annual rain fall of 1200-1300mm during north-east and
south-west monsoon. The following graph shows the average rainfall in
Chennai.

This is higher as compared to the average rainfall in India. But alike every
metro it also faces the scarcity of water. In order to resolve this issue, Tamil
Nadu government launched The rain water harvesting scheme in 2001. The
following calculation gives brief idea about the amount of water collected
through rain water harvesting in Chennai.

For a building with a flat terrace area of 100 sq.m.,

Average annual rainfall
= 1,300 mm = 1.3 m
Total volume of water which falls on this area during a year
= 100 sq.m. x 1.30 m
= 130 m3 = 130 x 1000
= 130,000 liters
Assuming that 60% of this water can be harvested
effectively, the volume harvested in a year
= 60/100 x 130,000 liters
= 78,000 liters
or 78,000 liters /365 = 214 liters /day per house
Following the implementation of RWH systems, the city in 2005, saw a record annual rainfall of
250 cm. When surveys were carried out, they showed that the water table had gone up by 20 feet.