Flooding Issues and Water Resources Management

1. Flooding Issues and Water Resources Management Venkatesh Merwade School of Civil Engineering, Purdue University India-IITKharagpur Workshop, 2013

2. Background • Education • B.E. (Environmental Engg.), Shivaji University, India • MSc. (Engineering Hydrology), National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland • PhD (Civil Engineering), University of Texas at Austin, USA • Professional Experience and Expertise • Design of water and sewer distribution systems for many cities in India • Design of Industrial Water and Wastewater Treatment Plants in India • Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications for water resources • Hydrologic and hydraulic modeling at watershed scale • Hydrologic Information Systems

3. Hydrologic Modeling • Watershed scale modeling using HEC-HMS and SWAT • Use of global climate models and datasets to analyze hydro-climatic trends at regional and continental scale • Use of 1D and 2D hydraulic models for flood modeling and mapping

4. Hydrologic Information Systems • Have been an active member of the Consortium of Universities for Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc. (CUAHSI), Hydrologic Information Systems (HIS) project • One of the CoPI on the ongoing HydroShare project • Development of WaterHUB and SWATShare for sharing hydrologic models (www.water-hub.org)

5. How can I contribute? • Quantity and quality of water play a major role in the overall human health and well being • Quantity is affected by hydrologic extremes such as drought and flood. • Predicting the magnitude, occurrence and distribution of water during these extremes is critical for both decision makers and stakeholders

6. Q t Flood Inundation Mapping (FIM) Qp Digital Elevation Model (DEM)

7. Alternative Low Cost Methods for Floodplain Mapping FEMA SSURGO

8. Kenya Project Build a system-based tool to support policies to mitigate drought impacts in East Africa http://humanitarian.worldconcern.org/tag/horn-of-africa/page/2/ Courtesy: Datu Agusdinata, NIU

9. Triptych Approach Multi-Disciplinary Footprints An integrated approach for supporting drought mitigation policies • Systems Modeling & Computer Simulation • Conflict Resolution role-playing game involving real stakeholders • Ex-ante Evaluation of Drought mitigation Policies • Engineering (Civil and Agriculture) • Social science • Climatology ======================= • Computer modeling • Gaming & simulation • Systems Thinking/ perspective

10. Systems • Understand fundamental causes, process, interdependencies, and impacts of drought • Build a representative systems model

11. Watershed System Scope • Sub-basin Model

12. Hydrological Policies Sand Dam • Earth Dams store rainwater in artificial “perched aquifers”; evaporation is less of a factor • Rainwater harvesting (RWH) • Rooftop tanks store rainwater collected from impermeable surfaces for use at later times • Ponds/Pans are strategically dug to collect runoff, evaporation and siltation are key issues • Wells • Hand dug wells require little technical skills and are inexpensive but can dry up during droughts • Deep (Boreholes) are reliable during times of drought but are costly, require high technical skills, knowledge of surrounding subsurface hydrology, and encourage settlement commons.wikimedia.org Pond Borehole FAOSWALIM.org Unicef.org

14. Thank you! Contacts: Venkatesh Merwade – vmerwade@purdue.edu http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~vmerwade