Combining Dynamic Storage and Recovery Techniques with te use of Smart Water Metering for the Multi-period Aquifers Management in Qatar

The Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) represents a feasible technique for groundwater management. It
consists in injecting water in the aquifer during the periods of water availability and then recovery of the water
from the subsurface during the periods of high demand. However, the ASR processes have not been fully
understood and examined in Qatar. Achieving successfully a ASR project will help in providing sufficient
freshwater resources to meet the essential water demands for certain durations of time, in case of zero water
or insufficient supply from desalination plants (sudden technical failure, seawater pollution, ..etc.) and also
during peak demand periods (e.g., summer time).
The outcomes of the ASR may suggest the need of injecting more water than the capacity of the currently
existing wells. In this case, there will be necessity to expand the injection network by digging additional wells.
Such a problem can be solved by employing the facility location techniques typically used in the field of
logistics, while taking into account the hydrological properties of the land and of the wells and pumping
technologies.
Combined to such a problem, this project will also investigate the feasibility of adopting smart water meters
to measure groundwater extraction in the agriculture sector that currently use 92% of the total abstracted
groundwater. The farms consumptions will be then monitored by an online information system to ensure that
the agriculture water extraction obeys to the ASR outcomes. Otherwise, further centralized decisions can be
taken in order to avoid excessive groundwater pumping. A multi-period dynamic water planning approach
allows a sufficient level of flexibility in order to take recourse actions on the extracted volumes whenever is
needed

Water security can be enhanced in Qatar by injecting excess desalinated water contracted in winter period. The project goes into detailed analysis and optimization of the process of injecting and abstracting the injected water and looking to the logistic side of connecting the different injection/abstraction wells to the exiting water network

In progress