Urban water management is crucial for the expeditious development of cities, particularly in the context of human-induced climate change. Conventional hydrological rainfall-runoff models often struggle to address the interplay of growing urban sprawl, water availability, and community needs, specifically in regional areas with a complicated terrain and limited/no real time data. This study examines the implications of utilizing Water Accounting Plus (WA+) by a thorough assessment of water inflows, utilization, and losses to empower local communities to adopt integrated approaches, including runoff estimation and rainwater harvesting, in Dehradun, the capital city of Uttarakhand state in India. The city faces repetitive waterlogging, fierce freshwater depletion, and urban floods, which tends to increase ∼70-80% by 21 st century. WA+ can lead to assistance by identifying the bottlenecks in the system, keeping a tab on rainfall-runoff events. By integrating hydrological modelling along with GIS tools and community driven rainwater harvesting, ∼67.01 Mm 3 /annum of runoff can be harnessed from the streets, roof-tops, and other open spaces, which often goes dormant causing severe water logging. This can help mitigate the urban floods and enhance groundwater augmentation ensuring prolonged water availability as water demands are going to increase by 1.25 times by 2041. This work draws attention to Dehradun city and similar peri-urban areas with inadequate real time flow data heading for a more adaptive and sustainable approach in line with policy goals like the Jal Jeevan Mission and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation ( AMRUT) , progressing towards more resilient and self-sustaining water management system.
Gupta et al. (Fri,) studied this question.