Strategic Water Reserve in Abu Dhabi: An Analysis on the Optimal Development Plan

Abstract

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) relies heavily on desalinated water as a water resource. In the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, desalinated water is used to meet residential and industrial water demand and accounts for part of agricultural water consumption. A key concern in desalination is on the vulnerability of this water production process to pollutions and emergency break downs (e. g. oil spills or red tide incidents). As a result, reservoirs of a substantial capacity are needed for water supply under contingency. In 2013, total available water in existing storage and the water network can sustain maximum of two days of water demand in Abu Dhabi. Other sources of water supply in Abu Dhabi include Treated Sewage Effluent (TSE) and Ground water, which covers two thirds of total water demand. However, groundwater levels are depleting because of low recharge rates (less than 4% of total annual groundwater consumption) as the emirate locates in an arid region with rainfall levels lower than 100 mm/year. To address the above issues, the government of Abu Dhabi has introduced Strategic Water Reserve by using underground aquifers as the reservoir. This practice is known as Artificial Storage and Recovery (ASR). This thesis develops a simulation model to examine the characteristics of water supply shortfall when ASR is introduced not only to store excess desalination water during non-peak hours but also to serve as a source of water supply under contingencies. The results show that water shortfall in meeting water demand under the current desalination capacity will be delayed by 2 years and 9 months. The shortfall can be stretched further by 2 months or even 3 months if the recovery efficiency was set at 78% or 80%, respectively, instead of 75%. When the emergency of red tide incidents and demand seasonality variation are introduced, Monte Carlo simulation analysis shows that the first water shortfall will occur 30 months later at 97.5% confidence level than if no ASR is in place.

Date of Award	Jun 2013
Original language	American English
Supervisor	I-tsung Tsai (Supervisor)