Horlings, Thom (2021) Future Freshwater Availability of Cape Town. Bachelor thesis.
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Abstract
From 2015 to 2018, Cape Town, South Africa experienced serious drought resulting in a water crisis. A combination of increased water demand, population growth and a large dependency on surface water makes the Cape Town water systems vulnerable for long periods of decreased precipitation. 96% of all freshwater for the city is coming from a network of dams, all dependent on precipitation in the winter period to replenish. This research focuses on calculating the future fresh water supply for Cape Town by working out the implications of various climate scenarios on the precipitation in Cape Town and translating these predictions to the actual supply of freshwater in the dam reservoirs. A combination of secondary data sources has been used for this study. An analysis on both dam levels and precipitation showed the relation between precipitation and dam levels. Future precipitation for various climate change scenarios has been calculated and show a decrease of precipitation for each scenario, supporting the findings of other researches and predictions. The precipitation predictions have been used to calculate possible future dam levels under the scenarios. The decrease of precipitation results in a decrease of dam levels, and thus the freshwater availability. This shows that Cape Town will need to diversify its water sources in order to be able to keep up with the growing demand and be more resilient to periods with decreased precipitation or extreme weather events.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
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| Degree programme: | Human Geography and Planning |
| Supervisor: | Mallon, G. |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Jul 2021 08:11 |
| Last Modified: | 30 Jul 2021 08:11 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3621 |
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