Impact of urban expansion on potential flooding, storage and water harvesting in the city of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Shanableh, Abdallah; Al‐Ruzouq, Rami; Siddique, Mohsin; Merabtene, Tarek; Yilmaz, Abdullah Gokhan; Imteaz, Monzur Alam

doi:10.1051/matecconf/201712009007

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Shanableh et al [22] studied the impact of urban expansion on urban flooding and water harvesting in Sharjah. The study confirmed that the four-time increase in built-up areas coincided with a ten-fold increase in population growth over the same period.…”

Section: Hydrological Issues Associated With Urban Growthmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Hydrological Studies in the United Arab Emirates

Almheiri

Rustum

Wright

et al. 2023

Water

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The increasing interest in hydrological studies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has resulted in the publication of several papers on hydrology and its broad use for addressing contemporaneous challenges confronting humans and the environment in the region. However, for several reasons, these efforts have remained invisible and unrecognized. This paper has reviewed the literature on hydrological research in the UAE to provide a comprehensive source of information for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders. The documented studies were carefully selected, relying on a bibliometric analysis methodology of five phases to specify the boundary of the study area, adopt the primary keywords for the search, evaluate the obtained papers, exclude the non-conforming ones, and classify the final results into four distinguished topics—namely, rainfall analysis, urban growth and flood hazards, cloud seeding and changing climate, and groundwater situation and utilization. The evaluation process considered assessing the papers’ relevancy, authenticity, and coverage of the main issues of interest. In all, a total of 50 published papers were identified based on the specified criteria and reviewed. The main findings were first that the amount of rainfall over the UAE has been declining in the last decade, and this trend is expected to continue, although intensities are rising, suggesting shorter duration events. Secondly, the extensive urban growth in the country has resulted in increasing incidences of urban floods and declining groundwater recharge. Both of these are to be expected as consequences of the increased imperviousness from urbanization and the higher intensities from shorter-duration rainfall events. Thirdly, although the cloud-seeding program has proved to be successful in increasing precipitation amounts, the impact of this on flooding due to more extreme rainfall intensities and on air quality remains worrisome. Finally, groundwater analyses have shown that it is still the main freshwater resource in the country, but its long-term sustainability and quality are being threatened by the declining recharge. This calls for a national policy for groundwater management in the UAE to tackle the challenges associated with the increasing demand for water in all sectors of the economy. The study recommended addressing the gap in the hydrological literature of the UAE, specifically in the field of big meteorological data analysis, the socioeconomic impacts of urban floods, the impacts of climate change in urbanized regions, and the possibility of using alternative resources to recharge groundwater as part of sustainable water management.

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Section: Hydrological Issues Associated With Urban Growthmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review of Hydrological Studies in the United Arab Emirates

Almheiri

Rustum

Wright

et al. 2023

Water

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“…The rapid urbanization of arid regions over the past several decades has not only altered the surface hydrology but has also changed other components of the water cycle (e.g., Salvadore [11], In the UAE, the conversion of pervious desert soils to expansive areas of impervious cover, through rapid urbanization, has drastically increased runoff and rerouted natural channels [9]. Sandy soils of high infiltration capacity have been replaced by asphalt and concrete surfaces which allow for little natural mitigation to precipitation events.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most flooding in the UAE occurs during the rainy season from October to March, especially in the northern and eastern coastal watersheds [9]. For example, heavy downpour in October and November 2017 resulted in flash flooding in Al Fujairah and Al Sharjah leading to street and wadi flooding that swept away cars and caused fatalities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…None of the studies that examined the hydrology of the region or the impact of urbanization on runoff (e.g., Shanableh [9], Al-Ghamdi [29], Sharif [30]) addressed, nor tried to quantify, coastal runoff. To the best knowledge of the authors, no previous studies have tried to quantify coastal runoff in the UAE and the factors that control its spatial and temporal distributions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coastal Runoff in the United Arab Emirates—The Hazard and Opportunity

et al. 2019

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Properly quantifying the potential exposure of hyper-arid regions to climate extremes is fundamental to developing frameworks that can be used to manage these extremes. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), rapid growth may exacerbate the impacts of climate extremes through urbanization (increased runoff), population and industrial development (more water demand). Water resources management approaches such as Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) application may help mitigate both extremes by storing more water from wet periods for use during droughts. In this study, we quantified the volumes of runoff from coastal watersheds discharging to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Gulf that could potentially be captured to replenish depleted aquifers along the coast and help reduce the adverse impacts of urban flooding. To this aim, we first downloaded and processed the Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (IMERG) rainfall data for a recent wide-spread storm event. The rainfall product was then used as input to hydrologic models of coastal watersheds for estimating the resulting runoff. A multi-criteria decision analysis technique was used to identify areas most prone to runoff accumulation. Lastly, we quantified the volumes of runoff that could potentially be captured from frequency storms of different return periods and how rapid urbanization in the region may increase these runoff volumes creating more opportunities for the replenishment of depleted aquifers. Our results indicate that the average runoff from watersheds discharging to the ocean ranges between 0.11 km3 and 0.48 km3 for the 5-year and 100-year storms, respectively. We also found that these amounts will substantially increase due to rapid urbanization in the coastal regions of the UAE. In addition to water supply augmentation during droughts, potential benefits of application of MAR techniques in the UAE coastal regions may include flood control, mitigation against sea-level rise through subsidence control, reduction of aquifer salinity, rehabilitation of ecosystems, cleansing polluted runoff and preventing excessive runoff into the Gulf that can contribute to red tide events.

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“…To the knowledge of the current authors, there are no comprehensive studies in the literature investigating the urbanization effects on floods for Sharjah city. Although Shanableh and Al-Ruzouq [19] and Shanableh et al [20] investigated land cover change and urbanization in Sharjah city, neither of these studies focused on the urbanization and flood relationship. In the current study, first, the temporal and spatial variation of land cover change and associated impacts on runoff were assessed using satellite images coupled with a geographic information system (GIS) over the period from 1976-2016.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Land Cover Change on Urban Floods and Rainwater Harvesting: A Case Study in Sharjah, UAE

Shanableh

Al‐Ruzouq

Yilmaz

et al. 2018

Water

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In this study, multi-temporal satellite images combined with rainfall data and field observations were used to assess the spatial and temporal changes in urban flooding and urban water harvesting potential in the coastal city of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE) during the period from 1976 to 2016. During the study period, the population increased by approximately 14-fold with about a 4-fold increase in built areas. Being in a hot, dry region with average rainfall of about 100 mm/year, the city did not invest in a comprehensive drainage infrastructure. As a result, the frequency, extent and risk associated with urban floods increased significantly. The expansion of built areas progressively increased the impervious land cover in the city, decreasing the minimum precipitation required to generate runoff by approximately 32% and significantly increasing the runoff coefficient. In parallel to rapid urbanization, the urban rainwater harvesting potential significantly increased over 1976-2016. Urban flood maps were generated using three thematic factors: excess rain, land elevation and land slope. The flood maps were confirmed by locating urban flood locations in the field using GPS. This study demonstrates the impact of urbanization through assessing the relationship between urbanization, runoff, local floods and rainwater harvesting potential in Sharjah and provides a basis for developing sustainable urban storm water management practices for the city and similar cities.

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Impact of urban expansion on potential flooding, storage and water harvesting in the city of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Cited by 5 publications

References 11 publications

A Review of Hydrological Studies in the United Arab Emirates

A Review of Hydrological Studies in the United Arab Emirates

Coastal Runoff in the United Arab Emirates—The Hazard and Opportunity

Effects of Land Cover Change on Urban Floods and Rainwater Harvesting: A Case Study in Sharjah, UAE

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