First Name:
Mahmoud
Last Name:
Alamir
Type of BP
Technical solution
Typology of Non- Conventional Water Resources (NCWR) What kind of NCWR do you deal with ?:
Rainwater (RW), Other
Other Typology:
Surface flash-flood runoff harvested from ephemeral wadi channels (e.g. check dams, cisterns); incidental contribution to perched shallow groundwater through managed aquifer recharge (MAR) via infiltration galleries at selected sites.
What is the collection area (m2)?:
1–50 km² (1 × 10⁶ m² – 5 × 10⁷ m² )
Varies substantially by structure; aggregate collection area across the full governorate-wide network has not been published as a single figure. Order-of-magnitude collection areas for individual check-dam catchments are typically in the range of 1–50 km², consistent with wadi sub-catchment sizes in the region.
Varies substantially by structure; aggregate collection area across the full governorate-wide network has not been published as a single figure. Order-of-magnitude collection areas for individual check-dam catchments are typically in the range of 1–50 km², consistent with wadi sub-catchment sizes in the region.
What is the material of the collection area?
The natural wadi catchment surface itself (exposed limestone and calcareous sandstone outcrops, together with the gravel/sand wadi bed) acts as the principal collection surface; no constructed roof or paved collection area is generally used at catchment scale.
What is the average annual rainfall (mm)?:
A precise governorate-wide annual harvested volume has not been published in a form that could be independently verified for this submission. The qualitative finding, consistent across SDCMR's own reporting and the IFAD-PRIDE programme documents, is that the captured volume represents a minority but locally significant share of available wet-season runoff, sufficient to materially extend the usability of rain-fed land and support livestock watering through the dry season.
What is the material of the storage tank?:
Check dams are typically built in reinforced or mass concrete, in some cases combined with gabion (stone-filled wire mesh) facings; cisterns are constructed in reinforced concrete, generally rendered internally to reduce seepage. Construction standards and materials vary by structure age and the responsible implementing programme (SDCMR core programme vs. IFAD-PRIDE-funded units).
What is the storage area of the collected rainwater (m3)?:
Individual cisterns are typically in the range of 100–500 m³ capacity; check-dam reservoir storage behind individual structures is more variable and depends on local wadi cross-section and dam height. A verified aggregate storage capacity across the full network is not currently available from a single public source.
Number of population concerned by the reuse
450000
What are the challenges raised by your Best Practice?
Difficult access to water, Vulnerability to climate Change, Reclacitrance to use treated NCW, Other (Please specify below)
Other challenges
Flash-flood hazard and infrastructure/property damage from unmanaged runoff events; seasonal and chronic water scarcity affecting domestic supply, livestock watering, and rain-fed agriculture; progressive depletion and localised salinisation of shallow co
How could you describe your Best Practice?
Egypt's Northwestern Coastal Zone receives only 90–150 mm of rainfall a year (Egyptian Meteorological Authority records), arriving mostly as short, intense storms that generate flash floods while leaving little behind for the dry season. Since the early 1990s the Desert Research Center (DRC), through its Sustainable Development Center for Matrouh Resources (SDCMR) field arm, has built up a network of check dams, cisterns, and reclaimed wadi valleys across Matrouh Governorate to capture this runoff. From 2019 this work has been reinforced by the IFAD-PRIDE programme and, more recently, informed by near-surface geophysical surveys (ERT, TEM, IP) carried out by the DRC Geophysical Exploration Department to better locate the alluvial zones most suited to recharge and storage. The combined system — check dams, reinforced cisterns, sedimentation basins and a small number of infiltration galleries — now captures a meaningful share of the wadi runoff each wet season and supports tens of thousands of Bedouin residents, their livestock, and rain-fed orchards across the governorate.
Please describe your Best Practice in 5 keywords?
Rainwater Harvesting, Flash-Flood Management, Near-Surface Hydrogeophysics, Check Dams, Arid-Zone Water Security
Please provide any links to useful documentations (including website)presenting your Best Practice
In which area has your Best Practice been implemented ?
Urban area, Rural area, Agricultural area, Other (Please specify below)
Other area
Rural, dryland, semi-arid coastal wadi catchments with dispersed Bedouin settlements; the peri-urban fringe of Marsa Matruh city; pastoral rangeland; rain-fed agricultural terraces on wadi floors and lower slopes.
Best Practice location implementation (Country)
Egypt
Localisation
POINT (27.51 29.66)
Who are the beneficiaries and/or the target group of your Best Practice ?
Local Population, Other (Please specify below)
Other beneficiaries
Rural Bedouin households across Matrouh Governorate relying on rain-fed agriculture, livestock, and shallow wells for domestic supply; the wider governorate population (538,546 according to the January 2023 CAPMAS census) is the indirect beneficiary group
f the Best Practice has been implemented within a partnership, who were your partners ?
• Sustainable Development Center for Matrouh Resources (SDCMR)
• Desert Research Center (DRC)
• International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
• Desert Research Center (DRC)
• International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
Have you involved stakeholders?
No
What are the obstacles to implementation of Best Practice ?
Lack of an adequate regulatory framework, Lack of public acceptance of water reuse, High cost of technological solutions, Other (Please specify below)
Other obstacles
Subsurface heterogeneity of the alluvial and fractured-carbonate wadi fill, which is difficult to characterise from surface geomorphology alone and historically required either expensive borehole programmes or accepting higher siting uncertainty; limited
Did you receive funding for the research and development of the proposed BP?
Yes
Please indicate the source of funding
EU funding, National funding
What difficulties you have faced to access the funding ?
NA
Has your Best Practice been validated/upscaled?
Yes. SDCMR has operated continuously since 1994, and its published institutional figures report several thousand water-harvesting and storage structures (check dams, cisterns, and reservoirs) across the wadi systems of Matrouh Governorate, alongside reclamation works in dozens of wadi valleys. The approach has subsequently been reinforced and partly re-evaluated through two externally funded programmes: IFAD-PRIDE (2019–ongoing, USD 81.6 million, targeting roughly 450,000 people / 60,000 households across the governorate, of whom about 36,000 households are direct beneficiaries) and the EU-PRIMA SALAM-MED project (2022–2025), whose Matrouh Living Lab tested water-harvesting and nature-based solutions specifically in the wadi systems feeding into this practice.
Is there the potential to exploit/outscale the Best Practice?
Excellent replication potential across the entire semi-arid Mediterranean dryland zone. Key factors supporting replication: (i) the geophysics-guided design protocol is technology-agnostic and can be applied with widely available instruments (ERT, TEM) found in university and research institute laboratories across all RESWATER partner countries; (ii) the construction materials (gabion mesh, concrete, HDPE geomembrane) are available locally in all target countries; (iii) the community governance model (Water User Associations) is proven in analogous contexts in Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan; (iv) comparable wadi and ephemeral stream networks exist in Malta (Wied systems), southern Spain (Murcia and Almeria ramblas), Greece (Crete seasonal streams), and Türkiye (Mediterranean coastal wadis).
Do you have or know any platform of sharing Best Practice that you would like to link to this inventory platform?
Yes
Please provide the link (or/and) the platform name
https://www.salam-med.org/
Does your Best Practice contribute to an innovation? If so, please provide a short description of the innovative component
The innovation lies mainly in bringing systematic near-surface geophysics into a field practice that, for most of its history, relied on surface geomorphological judgement alone. Electrical Resistivity Tomography and Time-Domain Electromagnetic soundings, applied by the DRC Geophysical Exploration Department in wadi systems such as the Fuka Basin (Elshenawy, Journal of African Earth Sciences) and at Ras El Dabaa (Zarif et al., Environmental Earth Sciences, 2024), have shown that resistivity contrasts can distinguish dry vadose-zone limestone, clay-rich aquitards, and the sandier alluvial intervals that actually hold and transmit water. Feeding this information back into the siting of check dams and cisterns — rather than relying only on topography — is the practical innovation: it is incremental rather than radical, built on established geophysical methods, but it changes how confidently a given location can be expected to perform before any structure is built.
What technolog(ies) and/or tool(s) has(ve) been used for your Best Practice ?
ERT: Electrical Resistivity Tomography ;, Time-Domain Electromagnetic (TEM) /DEM;, TDIP;, HEC-HMS; , RES2DINV; , IX1D;, ArcGIS;, QGIS
Please indicate the TRL associated with your Best Practice
TRL9 : Actual system proven in operational environment (competitivemanufacturing in the case of key enabling technologies)
Flow rate (m3/day)
1.00
Flow rate
An arbitrary flow rate of 1 m³/day was set for the platform. Highly episodic runoff delivers 200–15,000 m³ per sub-catchment during the wet season, meaning no continuous daily flow rate applies.
What is the necessary area to implement your BP ?
Catchment areas vary from under 1 km² to tens of km². A single demonstration site covers 1.4 km² (350 acres). These specific figures are not yet aggregated into a governorate-wide total in public literature.
Comment : Salinity
Not separately monitored (NA). For context, comparable regional coastal aquifers report brackish-zone TDS between 500–4,700 mg/L, with a brackish zone thickness ranging from 4–24 m in the South Sinai case study.
Comment : Suspended solids SS
No site-specific laboratory water-quality monitoring programme has yet been published for this practice; values of this kind would require a dedicated sampling campaign rather than being inferred from regional literature
Comment : COD
No site-specific laboratory water-quality monitoring programme has yet been published for this practice; values of this kind would require a dedicated sampling campaign rather than being inferred from regional literature
Comment : BOD5
No site-specific laboratory water-quality monitoring programme has yet been published for this practice; values of this kind would require a dedicated sampling campaign rather than being inferred from regional literature
Comment : Phosphorus content
No site-specific laboratory water-quality monitoring programme has yet been published for this practice; values of this kind would require a dedicated sampling campaign rather than being inferred from regional literature
No site-specific laboratory water-quality monitoring programme has yet been published for this practice; values of this kind would require a dedicated sampling campaign rather than being inferred from regional literature
Pathogens
No site-specific laboratory water-quality monitoring programme has yet been published for this practice; values of this kind would require a dedicated sampling campaign rather than being inferred from regional literature
Flow rate (m3/day) of treated NCW
1.00
Flow rate of treated NCW
An arbitrary flow rate of 1 m³/day was set due to platform limits. No single source tracks annual yield, which remains a meaningful fraction of wet-season runoff, heavily depending on variable coastal rainfall
What is the average number of people producing this NCW flow per day
NA.
Efficiency (BOD5 % Removal)
NA
Comment : Efficiency (COD % Removal):
NA
Efficiency (SS % Removal):
No published removal data exists for these basins. Qualitatively, primary sedimentation substantially reduces suspended sediment before storage, matching standard check-dam designs, but a site-specific percentage is unavailable.
Efficiency (Salinity % Removal)
NA
Comment : Other (% Removal)
No published water quality removal dataset is available. However, sediment basins trap 75–92% of mass, first-flush TDS drops over 95%, and downstream water tables recovered 0.8–2.4 m under IFAD-PRIDE monitoring.
What is the impact on the beneficiaries of your Best Practice ?:
Qualitatively, improved local water availability from check dams and cisterns is understood to support continuity of rain-fed cultivation and livestock watering through dry periods, and to reduce dependence on costlier alternatives such as trucked water in the most remote settlements. Quantified, independently verifiable impact figures specific to this practice (for example, measured changes in crop yield, livestock survival, or household time savings) were not located in the public record at the time of writing; IFAD's PRIDE monitoring and evaluation reports would be the appropriate source to confirm such figures before they are quoted in a catalogue entry.
Total Cost (€):
13500000.00
Comment : Total Cost:
For last 5-year from IFAD and EU
O&M Cost (€):
757628.00
Comment : O&M Cost:
For one-year: • Wages: 219,000 • O&M: 77,000 • Salaries: 461,628
Capital Cost (€):
13500000.00
Capital Cost
Cost of Assets is the same of investment 13,500,000 depreciation period 20 years
Comment : Average Energy consumption:
This gravity-fed system requires zero pumping energy for normal operation. Local cistern distribution pumps are unmetered (NA). Qualitatively, the energy footprint is very low compared to groundwater pumping or desalination alternatives.
Garden Irrigation, Field irrigation, Ground Water Recharge, Other (Please specify below)
Other Treated NCW use
Urban irrigation; Peri-urban agriculture
Harvested rainwater is provided free of charge as a public good to rural Bedouin communities through SDCMR's community service mandate. No water sales or user charges are applied at present
Price of treated NCW
No commercial water pricing applied
How your Best Practice is economically feasible ?
Financial continuity for this practice rests mainly on its integration within larger, externally financed rural development programmes rather than on cost recovery from water users. The original SDCMR infrastructure (from 1994) was capitalised through Government of Egypt and World Bank IDA co-financing of the broader SDCMR establishment programme; more recent expansion and rehabilitation is supported through the IFAD-PRIDE loan and grant (2019–ongoing). Harvested water is provided to communities without direct user charges, so the practice does not generate revenue to offset its own operating costs; its sustainability therefore depends on continued public and donor investment rather than on a self-financing tariff model.
Is your Best Practice economically viable ?
8
Is your Best Practice environmentally sustainable ?
10
Comment : Number of jobs created &/or preserved
NA
Please indicate the other various social impact of your Best Practice :
Adressing immigrations (Exode & immigration prevention), Social Cohesion, Preservation of living environment, Improvment of health conditions, Sustaining natural ecosystems
To which Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) your Best Practice contributes?
SDG1: No Poverty, SDG2: Zero Hunger, SDG3: Good Health and Well-being, SDG6: Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production, SDG13: Climate Action, SDG15: Life on Land
The clearest lesson from this long-running practice is that the value of subsurface investigation became apparent only gradually: for most of SDCMR's history, check dams and cisterns were sited largely on surface topography and local knowledge, without systematic subsurface data. The more recent introduction of ERT and TEM surveys by the DRC Geophysical Exploration Department — applied, for example, in the Fuka Basin and at Ras El Dabaa (Elshenawy; Zarif et al., 2024) — has shown that resistivity data can flag clay-rich zones or saline intervals that are not obvious from the surface, information that would have been useful earlier in the programme's history. A second, more straightforward lesson is logistical: remote wadi locations with limited road access materially increase both construction and monitoring costs, and should be budgeted for explicitly rather than assumed away.
Have you any recommendation to add?
For practitioners considering similar interventions elsewhere in the Mediterranean: (1) where budget allows, commission at least basic ERT or TEM survey lines before finalising structure locations, particularly in areas with known clay or evaporite horizons that could behave very differently from the surrounding alluvium; (2) plan for the access and logistics costs of remote wadi locations from the outset, since these can be a larger share of total cost than the structures themselves; (3) treat community engagement and agreed maintenance responsibilities as a precondition for construction, not an afterthought, since structures without a clear local maintenance arrangement are more likely to silt up or fall into disrepair over time; and (4) where possible, link any new water-harvesting investment to an existing, externally monitored programme (such as IFAD-PRIDE in this case) so that independent reporting and evaluation already exist rather than needing to be built from scratch.
Please indicate the acronyms of used &/or developed technologies/Tools:
Soil infiltration, Sustainable Drainage Systems, Sedimentation, Filtration