Journal of Korea Water Resources Association ISSN:2799-8746(Print) 2799-8754(Online) 한국수자원학회 논문집

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the amount of precipitation in South Korea would increase regardless of the reduction of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Moreover, the temporal and spatial rainfall variation would also increase in the future. Due to the geographic allocation of Korea, more than 80% of the annual precipitation occurs in the wet season from early July to late September. It is expected that the average precipitation in this period will increase from the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenario projections. These predictions imply an increased variability of available water resources. Rainwater harvesting system is widely used as an alternative water resources today. This study introduces a RBSN (rain barrel sharing network) as an efficient way to utilize alternative water resources under the RCP scenarios. The concept of RBSN combines individual rainwater harvesting system to a sharing network, which make the whole system more reliable. This study evaluated a RBSN in South Korea composed of four users based on a storage-reliability-yield (SRY) relationship. The study area comprises all 17 provincal areas in South Korea. The result showed a huge benefit from a RBSN in Korea under the historical rainfall condition. Even in the climate change condition, the results showed that a RBSN is still beneficial but the changes in reliability are different depending on provinces in Korea. The results of this study shows that a RBSN is a very effective and alternative measure that can deal with the impacts of climate change in the near future.