Optimising water yield from local catchment areas through greater recharge of rainwater into the groundwater system

• Main Author: Tan, Heinrich Sio Hoong
• Other Authors: Shuy Eng Ban
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/75230
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Water crisis has always been an recognised issue in Singapore due to its limited natural sources of water. The scarcity of land for fresh water containment and the increasing water demand further intensify the situation. This research focuses on optimising the yield from local catchment areas through increased baseflow recharge to deliver a larger contribution to the water demand. A modified hydrological concept based method and a simpler mathematical approach, the regression method and the technique of average respectively, had been introduced into the reservoir simulation model developed by previous researcher to better predict baseflow contribution. Also, the theoretical modelling was manipulated to operate at different reliability to determine the optimal withdrawal rate. It was found from the results that the simple technique of average tended to overestimate the baseflow as compared to the regression method, which was expected to be nearer to the reality. Besides, increasing the baseflow infiltration, even to an extreme, did not improve much on the design yield from the reservoir. In addition, the reservoir is observed to perform optimally at a reliability of 95 %. To sum up, future research can be continued on the comparison between the theoretical results and the actual on site data to validate the practicality of this computer simulation in real case.