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Reservoir Heightening as a Method to Ensure Water Security in Arid and Semi-

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 Reservoir Heightening as a Method to Ensure Water Security in Arid and Semi-
Arid Regions
Ismail Elhassnaoui, † Zineb Moumen, Issam Serrari,
Hydraulic System Analysis Team University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Ministry of Agriculture and
Mohammadia School of Engineers, Abdellah Fisheries
Rabat, Morocco Fez, Morocco Marrakech, Morocco
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Ahmed Bouziane, Driss Ouazar, Moulay Driss Hasnaoui,

Hydraulic System Analysis Team Hydraulic System Analysis Team Ministry of Equipment, Trasport,
Mohammadia School of Engineers, Mohammadia School of Engineers, Logistic and Water
Rabat, Morocco Rabat, Morocco Rabat, Morocco
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

ABSTRACT ACM Reference format:

The 6th (SDGs (6)) and the 2nd (SDGs (2)) Sustainable Ismail Elhassnaoui, Zineb Moumen, Issam Serrari, Ahmed Bouziane,
Driss Ouazar, and Moulay Driss Hasnaoui. 2020. Reservoir heightening as
Development Goals aim to guarantee the balance between
a method to ensure water security in arid and semi-arid regions. In
sustainable development of water and food nexus. Indeed, Arid and Proceedings of International conference Geo-IT and Water Resources
semi-arid countries moved to dam construction to overcome water 2020 (GEOIT4W-2020). Al-Hoceima, Morocco, 5 pages.
shortage and to ensure food security. However, water and food https://doi.org/10.1145/3399205.3399236
security still a real problem for these countries. Furthermore,
climate change will increase drought periods as well as flash flood
frequency. This study proposes the heightening of existing 1 Introduction
reservoirs, to increase their capacity and store the flash floods. The
The anthropogenic factor, as well as the increasing population and
study was conducted through the Hassan Addakhil reservoir in
technology, play crucial roles in climate change [1]. These changes
Morocco. The precipitation temporal downscaling method is used
impact water balance in a way to sustain the period of drought along
to estimate hourly rainfall. HEC-HMS, as a hydrological model,
with more frequent flash floods. Changes in the hydrologic cycle
was used to assess hourly dam inflows.
are likely to have a significant impact on water security.
Moreover, the novelty of this study is the development of a program
Ensuring water security is supposed to integrate action based on
through VB.net to assess the reservoir heightening. The result
water availability, water accessibility, water safety and quality, and
shows that the Hassan Addakhil dam could be heightened by 8
water management [2]. According to Jiménez Cisneros et al. [3],
meters. Raising this dam may allow increasing its capacity to reach
80% of the global population suffers from water security problems.
475 Mm3.
In Africa, a rising temperature by 1°C will lead to decrease rainfall
for the Saharan region by 10–20% [4]. Precipitation is expected to
CCS CONCEPTS be reduced under A1 and A2 scenarios [5][6].
• Applied computing • Civil engineering • Hydrological science As a semi-arid country, drought and extreme storm events are
• Hydroclimatic science catastrophic features for Morocco. As a North Africain country,
Morocco has variable climates [7]. The kingdom is suffering from
KEYWORDS water shortage (Fig1) [2]. Water availability in morocco will
Water security, SDGs (6), Climate change, temporal downscaling, decrease to 560 m3/inhab/year by 2030 [8]. To face the water
reservoir heightening, flash flood security crisis, Morocco has adopted a significant dam
policy[9][10][11]. From 1960 to present, Morocco has
implemented 139 dams, mobilizing 18 Bm3 of surface water
[12][13].
The legal and regulatory aspect frames water security actions in
∗Article Title: Reservoir heightening as a method to ensure water security in arid Morocco. The 2011 Moroccan constitution recognizes water
and semi-arid regions accessibility and water availability as a human right. Moreover,
†
Author Ismail Elhassnaoui, Mohammadia School of Engineers, University Water Law 36-15 [14] enhances the institutional action in terms of
Mohammed V, Rabat-Morocco.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or integrated water management in a decentralized approach [12].
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed Furthermore, Morocco is one of the countries that ratify the 2030
for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full Agenda for Sustainable Development [15], which is supposed to
citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must
be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). GEOIT4W-2020, March
reach target 6 (SDGs (6)) that deals with water security.
11–12, 2020, Al-Hoceima, Morocco © 2020 Association for Computing
Machinery.ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-7578-8/20/03…$15.00
https://doi.org/10.1145/3399205.3399236
 GEOIT4W, 11-12 March 2020, ENSA Al Hoceima Morocco I. Elhassnaoui et al.

However, water scarcity in the context of climate change caused interquartile range. 75% of the dam inflow is less than 20 Mm3.
dam depletion. The extreme flash flood threatened the dam's safety However, extreme inflow may reach more than 160 Mm3.
and left a lot of damage [16]. Instead of filling the reservoirs, the Since, the construction of the Hassan Addakhil dam, the valley of
flash flood caused flooding in several watersheds, as was the case wadi Ziz has experienced flash floods namely:
in 2008, when all the dams over morocco spilled for many months  10 October 2008: The upstream flood flows reached
[17]. (Fig2). 2500 m3/s, and the Hassan Addakhil dam has spilled
and overtopped Fig(5).
 November 2014: 130 Mm3 inflow was recorded at the
Hassan Addakhil dam reservoir.
 September 2016: 40 Mm3 inflow was recorded at the
Hassan Addakhil dam reservoir.

Figure 1: Global water security index[2]

Figure 3: Upper ZIZ watershed (source: author)

Figure 2: Number of floods by a country during the period

1974 - 2003[17]

This study aims to propose harvesting flash floods by Reservoir

heightening to overcome water scarcity and avoid flood risks.
In this study, a temporal downscaling method is used to assess
hourly reservoir inflows. The reservoir heightening assessment is Figure 4: Hassan Addakhil monthly inflow (Mm³) over the
conducted through a VB.net program. As a study case, we chose period 1939-2003 (source: author)
the Hassan Addakhil reservoir, which regularizes the Ziz basin in
Morocco, Fig (3).

2 Study case
Hassan Addakhil was built as a result of the devastating floods of
05 November 1965, caused by a flood flow of more than 5000 m3/s.
The flood submerged the Ziz valley, the Tafilalet plain, and the Jorf
palm. These floods left 25000 homeless people, destroyed nearly
75000 olive trees, and more than 16000 palm trees. with a capacity
of 347 million m3, the Hassan Addakhil dam is 8 km upstream from
Errachidia. The dam regularizes the Ziz watershed flow in a way to
avoid floods and ensure irrigation demand.
Fig(4) shows that over the period (1939-2003), the dam is exposed
to flash floods. The rectangle of each box plot represents the
 Reservoir Heightening as a Method to Ensure Water Security in
GEOIT4W, 11-12 March 2020, ENSA Al Hoceima Morocco
Arid and Semi-Arid Regions

The two main simulation steps are the production of the net
precipitation and the transfer of the net rain to a flow discharge. The
HEC HMS platform exhibits a set of functions, adapted to specific
conditions, to process those steps. The choice of the method is up
to the scoop of the study. In the presented case, Ziz Ghriss
watershed has a semi-arid climate where the dry season lasts from
6 to 8 months [21], then to estimate the water runoff the soil
conservation curve number method (SCS-CN) [22] was chosen.
Many studies have been widely used the SCS-CN method for
application in continuous rainfall modeling, in arid, subtropical,
and tropical regions [23]–[26].

3.3 Flood Routing:

This study will simulate the flash flood event that happens on 10
Figure 5: Lahdeb bridge in Errachidia (10 October 2008) October 2008. The flood inflow caused an increase of discharge
over the spillway and overtopped the dam.
In this context, Flood routing[27] program was carried out for
assessing the outflow discharges and estimating the water volume
lost to determine the dam wall heightening. Fig (6)
3 Materials and methods The Flood routing program is based on the continuity equation
(Eq1) and the average outflow equation (Eq2)
3.1 Precipitation data and temporal downscaling
Equation 1: The continuity equation
The estimation of the water volume lost by Flash flood is based on
historical events information. However, a flash flood in the Ziz
watershed suffers from real-time data scarcity[18]. The basin 
Si 1  Si  Qif i 1  Qif i    T
2

 Qof i 1  Qof i  
T
2

agency of Guir-Ziz-Rheris provides daily precipitation data for
Foum Zaabel and Foum Tillicht rain gauge precipitation. To
estimate the hourly precipitation data, we use the temporal Si 1 : Reservoir storage at 𝑖 + 1 time S i : Reservoir storage at 𝑖
downscaling method based on synthetic design storm hydrograph
developed by Elhassnaoui et al [19]. time Qif ( i 1) : dam inflows at 𝑖 + 1 time Qif ( i ) : dam inflows at 𝑖

time T : Hourly step Qof  i 1 : Dam outflow at 𝑖 + 1 time

3.2 Hydrological model
The hydrological model conducted under HEC-HMS, and it was Qof  i  : Dam outflow at 𝑖 time T : Hourly step
developed by [19] in Ziz watershed.
The average outflow rate is based on the equation (Eq2):
The goal of the current step is to estimate the hourly water supplies
at HASSAN ADD-AKHIL’s dam, using the rain-flow transfer
model, in this case, HEC-HMS[20]. Equation 2: The average outflow
HEC-HMS (Hydrologic Engineering Center - Hydrologic Qd  Cd * L *( H  H c )3 / 2
Modeling System) is a hydrology software developed by engineers
from the United States Army (US Army Corps of Engineers) to Qd : Flow rate (m3/s)
simulate hydrological behavior and estimate the peak flow in H : Water level (m)
watersheds (rain-flow transfer).
It is a distributed model that allows a watershed to be subdivided H c : Crest elevation
into several parts, called sub-basins, which have similar hydrologic
behavior. The HEC-HMS hydrological model is particularly well C d : The dimensionless coefficient of discharge
suited to simulate the hydrological functioning of non-urbanized L : Spillway section length
watersheds. It also allows to simulate and incorporate reservoirs
and diversions, includes a graphical interface, capacities for
We suppose that the outflow Qof i 1 is equal to zero. Thus
handling, management and storing data, as well as viewing and
printing results
considering Qif ( i ) , Qif (i 1) and S i as input data, we obtain a
The methodology followed consists of conceptualizing the physical maximum stock Si 1 which cannot be exceeded in the first step
characteristics of the basin studied. HEC-GEOHMS extension
transforms the physical basin characteristic into a structure of because Qof i 1 it is equal to zero. Then, we determine the
hydrological data. The HEC-GEOHMS result is exported to HEC-
HMS hydrological modeling. Besides, HEC-HMS simulates the maximum H height corresponding to the Si 1 storage by the
hydrological behavior of the watershed by performing the rain-flow
transfer. Height-Area-Volume (HAV) curve interpolation. The next
 GEOIT4W, 11-12 March 2020, ENSA Al Hoceima Morocco I. Elhassnaoui et al.

iteration will allow as to estimate the stock Si 1 as well as the the dam heightening approach can be a tool to reach and maintain
water security.
outflow Qif ( i 1) . The same procedure is repeated at each time step. The results of this study show that reservoirs heightening could
improve dam performance.
The simulation of the 20 October 2018 flood event shows that the
upstream flood flows reached 2500 m3/s during the flood period.
Besides, throughout the flood abatement, the outflow peak reached
891 m3/s. The spillway reduced the dam inflow by 36%.
Fig (7) shows the inflow and outflow hydrograph, which indicates
the volume spilled. The result shows that over 110 hours of the
flood event, the dam spilled 100 Mm3, which can ensure the
irrigation demand for one year and enhance the dam performance.
The Height-Area-Volume curve interpolation shows that the dam
could be heightened by 8 meters, which allows increasing the dam
capacity to reach 475 Mm3.

Figure 6: Schematic diagram of flood routing program

(source: Author)

4 Result and discussion:

The adopted approach goes hand in hand with sustainable
development goals. A sustainable environment can be attained by
preserving, improving, and valuing the environment and natural Figure 7: Dam Inflow and outflow hydrograph
resources in the long term, maintaining the significant ecological
balances, on the risks on the environmental impacts. A sustainable
society can be maintained if it satisfies human needs and meets a 5 Conclusion
social goal. Encouraging the participation of all social groups in
health, housing, consumption, education, employment, culture can As a developing country, the vulnerability of the water scarcity
lead to a sustainable society. Furthermore, sustainable development impact in Morocco takes a critical dimension, mainly that its
goes alongside a sustainable economy that aims to develop growth
economy is primarily based on agriculture. The Spatio-temporal
and economic efficiency through sustainable production and
consumption patterns [28], in other term switching from the linear unbalance distribution of water, and water contamination amplifies
to the circular economy. the pressure.
Dams were primarily implemented in the arid and semi-arid
In this context, Reservoir heightening can be a solution in arid and
regions. For instance, in 1975 the Ethiopian Government introduce
soil and water conservation practices to mitigate soil erosion effect semi-arid regions to ensure water security and avoid flood risks.
[29], in the north part of the Tigray and Amhara 74000 check-dams The study was conducted through the Hassan Addakhil dam in
were constructed [30]. Morocco. By using the algorithm based on the continuity and the
A prolonged period of Droughts and flood risks compound by average outflow equations, the result shows that the dam could be
climate change increases the difficulty for dam management to heightened by 8 m. Raising the Hassan Addakhil dam may allow
meet the water demand crisis and avoid flood risks. Therefore
increasing its capacity to reach 475 Mm3, which could improve the
Many optimizing models were developed for overcoming extreme
events impact and enhancing the dam performance models[31]– performance of the dam and overcome the water shortage.
[34].
Dam heightening was adopted as a method for increasing hydro-
power capacity [35] or avoiding flood risks, as was the case for
Warragamba Dam [36]. In this context, this study demonstrates that
 Reservoir Heightening as a Method to Ensure Water Security in
GEOIT4W, 11-12 March 2020, ENSA Al Hoceima Morocco
Arid and Semi-Arid Regions

doi: 10.1007/s11269-006-9149-5.
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