Water supply and runoff capture reliability curves for hypothetical rainwater harvesting systems for locations across the U.S. for historical and projected climate conditions

Nasrin Alamdari,David J Sample,Jia Liu,Andrew Ross

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2018.03.024

Abstract

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Assessing climate change impacts on the reliability of rainwater harvesting systems” (Alamdari et al., 2018) [1]. This article evaluated the water supply and runoff capture reliability of rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems for locations across the U.S. for historical and projected climate conditions. Hypothetical RWH systems with varying storage volumes, rooftop catchment areas, irrigated areas, and indoor wSater demand based upon population from selected locations were simulated for historical (1971–1998) and projected (2041–2068) periods, the latter dataset was developed using dynamic downscaling of North American Regional Climate Change (CC) Assessment Program (NARCCAP). A computational model, the Rainwater Analysis and Simulation Program (RASP), was used to compute RWH performance with respect to the reliability of water supply and runoff capture. The reliability of water supply was defined as the proportion of demands that are met; and the reliability of runoff capture was defined as the amount stored and reused, but not spilled. A series of contour plots using the four design variables and the reliability metrics were developed for historical and projected conditions. Frequency analysis was also used to characterize the long-term behavior of rainfall and dry duration at each location. The full data set is made publicly available to enable critical or extended analysis of this work.

Highlights

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Assessing climate change impacts on the reliability of rainwater harvesting systems” (Alamdari et al, 2018) [1]
Hydrology and Water Resources Climate Change and Rainwater Harvesting Systems Figures Modeling Analyzed Historical and projected data from 17 stations listed in Table 1 were downloaded from North American Regional CC assessment program (NARCCAP)
The historical hourly observation rainfall data from 1971– 1998 were obtained from National Climate Data Center (NCDC); this data was used for bias correction of NARCCAP historical and projected climate simulations for the same locations

Summary

Frequency analysis

Frequency analysis of rainfall events and dry durations based upon precipitation data for historical and projected periods across the U.S was used to characterize long-term rainfall patterns. Historical and projected hourly data were processed into events using multiple inter-event times (dry period between events). Processed precipitation data was imported to the computational model for evaluating the frequency distribution of rainfall events [4]. A similar procedure using frequency analysis was applied to assess the exceedance probabilities of dry durations after filtering out smallest (r 2.54 mm) rainfall events. Dry duration between any two consecutive rainfall events was computed from the sorted ranks. The occurrence frequency for dry duration for historical and projected periods at each site were plotted and compared. The remaining frequency plots have been placed in Appendix A and Appendix B for historical and projected CC conditions, respectively

RWH model description

Findings

Funding sources