Abstract
Iraq, a country in the Middle East, has suffered severe drought events in the past two decades due to a significant decrease in annual precipitation. Water storage by building dams can mitigate drought impacts and assure water supply. This study was designed to identify suitable sites to build new dams within the Al-Khabur River Basin (KhRB). Both the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the weighted sum method (WSM) were used and compared to select suitable dam sites. A total of 14 layers were used as input dataset (i.e., lithology, tectonic zones, distance to active faults, distance to lineaments, soil type, land cover, hypsometry, slope gradient, average precipitation, stream width, Curve Number Grid, distance to major roads, distance to towns and cities, and distance to villages). Landsat-8/Operational Land Imager (OLI) and QuickBird optical images were used in the study. Three types of accuracies were tested: overall, suitable pixels by number, and suitable pixels by weight. Based on these criteria, we determined that 11 sites are suitable for locating dams for runoff harvesting. Results were compared to the location of 21 preselected dams proposed by the Ministry of Agricultural and Water Resources (MAWR). Three of these dam sites coincide with those proposed by the MAWR. The overall accuracies of the 11 dams ranged between 76.2% and 91.8%. The two most suitable dam sites are located in the center of the study area, with favorable geology, adequate storage capacity, and in close proximity to the population centers. Of the two selection methods, the AHP method performed better as its overall accuracy is greater than that of the WSM. We argue that when stream discharge data are not available, use of high spatial resolution QuickBird imageries to determine stream width for discharge estimation is acceptable and can be used for preliminary dam site selection. The study offers a valuable and relatively inexpensive tool to decision-makers for eliminating sites having severe limitations (less suitable sites) and focusing on those with the least restriction (more suitable sites) for dam construction.
Highlights
The world’s population has reached 7.6 billion [1], and more than one-third of people in the world (2.1 billion) live in drylands [2]
This study serves as a good example of integration of remote sensing images, GIS, and geotechnics in water resources development
We evaluated the accuracy of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and weighted sum method (WSM) techniques
Summary
The world’s population has reached 7.6 billion [1], and more than one-third of people in the world (2.1 billion) live in drylands [2]. Iran has started construction of several dams on the Tigris tributary, such as the Silveh Dam [5] and the Sardasht Dam [6], on the Nirawan River These dams will become operational in the coming years, preventing a substantial quantity of the Nirawan River water from reaching Iraq. Since 1981, only one hydraulic impoundment structure, the Mosul Dam, has been built on the Al-Khabur River within Iraq, that became fully operational on 24 July 1986. This multi-purpose dam was designed for flood control, irrigation, and electric power generation [7]
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