Assessing the Rainwater Harvesting Potential of Pallavpuram Area in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

India has 31% of population dwelling in urban areas contributing 63% of its GDP. Even with this percentage of people living in urban areas, our cities are becoming overcrowded and congested. The resources of cities are under continuous strain and we need a smart way to manage the available resources in our cities and also generate additional resources to sustain the ever increasing urban population. The concept of smart cities is being developed to help in this direction. One of the key elements of smart cities is to provide adequate water supply for which it should provide smart solution to manage the water resources. Rainwater harvesting is in a way, a smart approach for collecting and storing rainwater at surface or sub-surface aquifers, before it is actually lost as surface runoff. Meerut is the biggest city in NCR after Delhi and the fastest developing city in Uttar Pradesh after Noida and Ghaziabad. Although the city has not been selected in the list of 98 cities to be developed under smart cities mission by the government, the city is going through an infrastructure boom in terms of flyovers, malls, hospitals and other projects being developed in and around the city. Water requirement for the city is mainly met from groundwater. The groundwater resources of the city are declining at an alarming rate. The present paper uses a GIS approach to assess total area of the catchments available for rainwater harvesting in Pallavpuram area of Meerut and calculate the amount of water which could be really harvested or used for replenishing groundwater reserves.