Domestic water demand challenges in Qatar
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Domestic water demand challenges in Qatar Husam Musa Baalousha 1,2 & Omar K. M. Ouda 3 Received: 3 August 2016 / Accepted: 5 December 2017 / Published online: 18 December 2017 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2017
Abstract Qatar is an arid country with limited water resources due to the low amount of rainfall it receives. With no surface water and an average annual rainfall of 80 mm per year, Qatar relies upon desalination to meet the increasing domestic water demand. The average annual rainfall recharge is around 60 million m3, whereas the total groundwater abstraction is 250 million m3 per year. As a result, groundwater level drops dramatically, thereby inducing brackish water upconing and saline water intrusion. Desalination provides 99% of domestic water demand, which increases continuously as a result of the influx of migrants into the country. The current capacity of desalination plants in Qatar is around 540 million m3 per year. Around 30% of this volume is being lost as a result of leakage in the water system network, and the rest is used for domestic purposes. This paper discusses three different scenarios of water demand until the year 2040. The results of these scenarios show water demand will vary between 516 and 2718 million m3 in the year 2040, depending upon the various trends in population growth, and assuming the current per capita of 500 l/day. The results of this study highlight the need for water rationing and conservation and may help the planners of future water demand. Keywords Qatar . Water management . Forecast scenarios . Domestic water demand . Groundwater . Desalination
Introduction Qatar is an arid country located to the east of Saudi Arabia and extending as a peninsula into the Arabian Gulf. The total area of Qatar is 11,586 km2 stretches in the north-south direction (Kimrey 1985), as shown in Fig. 1. The maximum length of Qatar is 180 km and its maximum width is 85 km. It is bounded by the Arabian Gulf from all directions except the south, where it borders Saudi Arabia. Over the last few decades, Qatar has seen a substantial increase in its population, and urbanization resulted from rapid economic development, which is based on fossil-fuel industry (Qatar General Secretariat for Development Planning 2009). The population
* Husam Musa Baalousha [email protected] 1
Qatar Environment and Energy research Institute (QEERI), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Doha, Qatar
2
College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), PO Box 34110, Doha, Qatar
3
Department of Civil Engineering, Prince Mohamed Bin Fahd University, PO Box 1664, Al-Khobar 31952, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
of Qatar has exponentially increased from about 50,000 in 1960 to about 2.5 million in 2015 (The World Bank Databank 2015; Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics 2016; Trading Economics 2016). This increase in population was associated with an increase on demand on the country limited water resources. As a result, the limited natural renewable water resources in the co
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