Integrated water resources assessment of Udaipur District

Project summary

Water resources in India are under increasing pressure due to increase in population, intensified agricultural production, changing food habits with growing income and industrial development, as well as pollution of the surface and subsurface waters. This has led to concerns whether water demands can be met while achieving food and nutrition security for the growing population and at the same time protecting the ecosystems. One of the growing urban areas in the state of Rajasthan is the city of Udaipur, which has experienced increased pressure on the water resources and is facing serious problems and challenges in securing adequate water supply of acceptable quality and mitigating pollution of the water resources.

Proper integrated water resources management in the city and district is hampered by insufficient knowledge of the overall water balance. The seasonal Ayad river is flowing through Udaipur city, however, the dynamics of this water system is poorly known. To improve the understanding of the system and thus establish a basis for better and sustainable water management, an integrated hydrological and hydraulic model will be developed and hereby clarify for the first time the overall water balance of the water system. A state-of-the-art web-enabled, GIS supported data support system (DSS) will be developed, which will contain not only time series of hydrological and meteorological data but also geo-referenced information on physical elements of the Ayad river basin.

Citizen science is documented as an efficient methodology to involve stakeholders in the management of their water and environmental resources. In the project, the citizen science approach will be further developed and used to complement conventional ways of scientific data collection for water resource management. In the process, this will result in the citizens becoming centrally involved in the planning of decisions related to water resource management.

Outputs

Midterm report
Collection of most existing system data (topography, geology, soil); time series of climate, hydrology, hydrogeology, water quality, climate and vegetation; data from global databases; and data from satellite platforms has been completed. The data are currently being uploaded in a data support system (DSS). The DSS system facilitates storing of existing data, easy storing of new data including data collected by the citizen science component and visualization of data.

A MIKE SHE model has been developed for a catchment area larger than for Ayad River encompassing Udaipur. Due to the seasonal flow of Ayad River no time series of discharge measurements are available, which is a critical factor for assessing the water balance. Thus, the MIKE SHE model has been expanded to include both Berach and Banas watersheds in order to get access to discharge measurements and enable calibration of the model for water balance assessments. The results of the large scale model will be used as boundary conditions for the Ayad River model.

The project interacts closely with the SSC city collaboration project. The project provides river simulation for the Gumaniya Nalla river stretch in Udaipur and the SSC project has provided detailed bathymetric data based on UAV surveys.

Citizen science has completed 14 activities engaging citizens, students, stake holders, professionals and influencers to take responsibility in the promotion of sustainable water management.