Evaluation of Residential Rainwater Harvesting in Poland Based on 50-Year Time Series for 19 Cities

Abstract

This article evaluated the decentralized rainwater harvesting (RWH) for 19 locations across Poland, for 1969–2018 historical rainfall data. A hypothetical residential rainwater harvesting system in selected locations was simulated by water balance modeling. A computational water balance model was developed to investigate the residential RWH performance with respect to 50-year daily rainfall data, runoff capture, rainwater storage, and residential water demand. The simulation results were used to characterize the water balance and long-term behavior of RWH system. The long-term behavior and harvesting performance were conducted as benchmarking metrics for all analysed cities.