Genetic Algorithm Model to Optimize Water Resources Allocation in Gaza Strip

Groundwater aquifer is considered the main and only water supply source for all kind of human usage in Gaza Strip (domestic, agricultural and industrial). This source is severely deteriorated in both quality and quantity for many reasons, includ- ing low rainfall, dramatic increase in the urban areas and population, pollution from overland activities, and seawater intrusion. In 2011, the Palestinian Water Authority has instituted a plan for integrated management of Gaza water resources that considers introducing of new external water resources to the system such as seawater desalination and treatment and reuse of wastewater. In this work, a genatic algorithm model was developed to seek the optimal combination of the management scenarioios of Pales- tinian water authority plan. The optimization code is designed and run using MATLAB R2011b. The objective function maxim- ized the benefits and minimizes the cost related to the use of different sources of water. The decision variables represents water allocation over different users sectors. The benefits from utilizing water for municipal and industrial purposes are based on the marginal value of water which is derived from the economic equilibrium point between supply and demand curves. The benefits from irrigation water are affected by the relationship between crop yield and salinity. The constraints in the optimiza- tion model are allowed to iterate between two bounds (upper bound and lower bound) until the optimal value for each variable is found. The results show that there is a significant improvement in aquifer’s water levels in the majority area of the Gaza Strip for the planning years 2015, 2025, and 2035 providing that the planned phased desalination and wastewater treatment schemes are implemented in the specifies time horizon. The results show that the resulted quality of available water for agriculture use in term of total weighted average of electrical conductivity is 962 µS/cm in the year 2015, and 876 µS/cm in the year 2025, and 842 µS/cm in the planning year 2035. The results also show that the resulted quality of available water for municipal and industrial use in term of total weighted average of electrical conductivity is 867 µS/cm in the year 2015, and 685 µS/cm in the year 2025, and 631 µS/cm in the planning year 2035

Brine Dispersion Modeling for Short-Term Low-Volume Desalination Plant of Deir Al Balah

Desalination of seawater is a promising alternative water source in coastal countries that suffer from depletion in conventional water sources. In Gaza Strip, the regional short-term low-volume (SLTV) seawater desalination plant was considered as an urgent solution to mitigate the suffering from water crisis. The plant will provide about 7.3 million cubic meters per year of freshwater for domestic uses. However, as a product from the reverse osmosis process, huge amount of brine, nearly 8.92 million cubic meters per year, with salinity reaches to 75,000 mg/L will be redirected to seawater. The arbitrary disposal of brine can have potential negative effects on marine ecosystems. To minimize the negative impacts of the rejected brine on marine environment under the change in the seawater characteristics over the four annual seasons, various outfalls configurations were simulated using CORMIX to study the efficiencies of their mixing behavior taking salinity variations as an indicator. The simulation results showed that the fanned-out unidirectional multiport outfall of option (7) is the optimal design configuration, where discharging the produced brine from the regional STLV plant via option (7) can meet the disposal standard at the boundary of regulatory mixing zone (RMZ) in the worst ambient condition of autumn at low astronomical tide by reducing the brine’s excess salinity at the edge of mixing zone to less than 1.25%(488 mg/L) above seawater salinity

Wastewater Reuse in Gaza Strip

The Middle-East region has an arid climate with very scarce water resources, which are under heavy and increasing stress. Therefore, it is vulnerable to climate change that will eventually reduce rainfall, due to changes in oceanoatmospheric circulation patterns

Applying the Triangle Method for the parameterization of irrigated areas as input for spatially distributed hydrological modeling—Assessing future drought risk in the Gaza …

In the Mediterranean region, particularly in the Gaza strip, an increased risk of drought is among the major concerns related to climate change. The impacts of climate change on water availability, drought risk and food security can be assessed by means of hydro-climatological modeling. However, the region is prone to severe observation data scarcity, which limits the potential for robust model parameterization, calibration and validation. In this study, the physically based, spatially distributed hydrological model WaSiM is parameterized and evaluated using satellite imagery to assess hydrological quantities. The Triangle Method estimates actual evapotranspiration (ETR) through the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and land surface temperature (LST) provided by Landsat TM imagery. So-derived spatially distributed evapotranspiration is then used in two ways: first a subset of the imagery is used to

A simulation/optimization approach to manage groundwater resources in the Gaza aquifer (Palestine)

A decision support system based on a simulation/optimization approach has been developed and applied to the Gaza Strip coastal aquifer (Palestine) to manage sustainable aquifer development under effective recharge operations and water quality constraints. The paper describes model development and simulation results

Evaluation of the effect of water management interventions on water level of Gaza coastal aquifer

Gaza coastal aquifer (GCA) is the most precious natural source where it is the only source of water for different uses. Groundwater crisis in Gaza includes two major folds: shortage of water supply and contamination. The extraction of groundwater currently exceeds the aquifer recharge rate. As a result, the groundwater level is falling continuously leading severely deterioration of GCA. The main objective of this study is to analyze and evaluate the current and proposed water resources management plans and their effect on the water level of GCA. In this respect, the available quantities of rainfall that could be harvested and infiltrated from different types of land-use based on existing and planned situations are studied using GIS tool and numerical models for GCA using V-MODFLOW environment for simulating four scenarios: (i) existing management practice (no action scenario), (ii) proposed Palestinian