Development and application of a new index-overlay method to assess urban runoff vulnerability to contamination (evaluat
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Development and application of a new index-overlay method to assess urban runoff vulnerability to contamination (evaluation in the Ardabil city, Iran) Reza Ghazavi 1
&
Rasool Imani 1 & Abazar Esmali ouri 2
Received: 5 March 2019 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2020
Abstract Urban runoff is an effective alternative water resource, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. Urban runoff exploitation permits cities to have a significant amount of water, but without assessing the runoff quality, harvesting of this resource is complicated and requires further investigations. Due to the lack of a specific method, in this study, a new index method (WLTR) was developed for assessing the urban runoff vulnerability to contamination. The WLTR index is based on rating different subfactors of wastewater (W), land use (L), transportation (T), and rainfall runoff (R) factors. The efficiency of the WLTR index was investigated in 12 sub-catchments of the Ardabil city in Iran. The priority of sub-catchment vulnerability was determined via WLTR index value. The efficiency of the developed method was investigated using direct measurement of several water quality parameters (pH, EC, TDS, TSS, TH, and SO4) in the sub-catchments outlet. A Water Quality Index (WQI) was calculated for each sub-catchment. The quality priority of sub-catchments was determined based on the WQI value. According to the measured data, an acceptable efficiency was observed for WLTR index. According to the results, the most vulnerable sub-catchments (Nos. 4, 11, and 12) had the lower runoff quality among studied sub-catchments, whereas the least vulnerable sub-catchments (Nos. 2, 9, and 8) had the higher runoff quality. Keywords Urban runoff . Vulnerability assessment . Index-overlay method . WQI . Contamination
Introduction Over the current century, the urban population has been raised rapidly. The urban population is expected to rise to 70% by 2050 (UN 2012). Water scarcity is one of the major challenges in urban areas, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of the world (Mays 2009; Taffere et al. 2016). Due to the high potential of runoff generation, there is enormous potential in urban runoff harvesting and utilization (Zhu et al. 2004; Angrill et al. 2017; Zhou et al. 2017). Urban Responsible Editor: Amjad Kallel * Reza Ghazavi [email protected] 1
Department of Watershed Management, Faculty of Natural Resources and Geoscience, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran
2
Department of watershed management, Faculty of natural resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardebili, Ardabil, Iran
runoff harvesting could lead to a reduction in the flooding, decreasing cost of the urban water/wastewater infrastructures, and finally decreasing the pressure on the drinking water and other water resources such as groundwater (van Roon 2007; Fletcher et al. 2008; Antunes et al. 2016). Accumulation of various pollutants on urban impervious surfaces increased due to population density, development of the different industrial, and
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