Rainwater harvesting as source control option to reduce roof runoff peaks to downstream drainage systems

The objective of the paper is to evaluate the potential of tank-based rainwater harvesting systems in free standing houses as the source control method to mitigate peak roof runoff due to rainfall in urban areas. To this aim, the water balance simulation of the rainwater tank was carried out using both high resolution rainfall series and toilet water demand data extracted from the database of results built in a previous field campaign involving six experimental households in southern Italy. Simulations show that significant potential for runoff peak reduction exists, basically depending on the rainwater tank size and on the characteristics of the water demand in the house.