Egypt’s Sinai Desert Cries: Utilization of Flash Flood for a Sustainable Water Management

Abstract

Water demand will increase and augmenting freshwater resources from the rainwater and flash flood will decrease the gap between supply and demand. Flash floods, which is considered as one of the worst weather-related natural disasters are highly unpredictable following brief spells of heavy rain. The eastern desert and the Sinai Peninsula are subjected to flash floods, where floods from the mountains of the Red Sea and Sinai are causing heavy damage to man-made features. The central focus of this chapter was to achieve a sustainable water resources management in the Sinai Peninsula. The objective of the current chapter is to mitigate and utilize the floods water as a new supply for water harvesting in Sinai. Applying water harvesting of the flash flood will reduce the flood risk at the outlet. In addition, it could be used for recharging the groundwater aquifers, which are the basis for sustainable development in Sinai. Furthermore, Bedouins usually move from place to place searching for fresh grazing for their animals and water for their families. These locations sometimes are hazardous areas as flash floods occur there. This chapter helps to make developed sustainable planning for the Bedouins, as hazard areas were defined. Established places to harvest and store the flooded water would allow the Bedouins to resettle the area. The total amounts of rainfall affecting the different drainage systems in Sinai is of the order of 2000 million m3/year, and the most of possible runoff water is about 150 million m3/year rainfall was roughly determined at some sites; for El-Arish region is about 1000 million m3/year (100 million m3/year runoff), 75 million m3/year (4 million m3/year runoff) for El-Gerafi region, 240 million m3/year (10 million m3/year runoff) for the Gulf of Suez region, 150 million m3/year for Bitter Lakes region, 300 million m3/year for south El-Bardawil region, and 100–600 million m3/year for the Gulf of Aqaba.