Estimation of Potential Water Resources in Mega Cities in Asia

The water shortage in mega cities in Asia, which face a rapid growth in urban population, is an outstanding problem. It is important, therefore, to accurately estimate the water balance in each city in order to use the limited water resources effectively. In this study, we estimated the potential water resources in し sixteen mega cities in Asia. The target cities were Delhi and Calcutta, India; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Yangon, Myanmar; Bangkok, Thailand; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Singapore; Jakarta, Indonesia; Hanoi, Vietnam; Beijing and Hong Kong, the People's Republic of China; Seoul, the People's Republic of Korea; Manila, the Philippines, and Sapporo and Tokyo, Japan. The potential water resources were estimated by subtracting the actual evaporation from the amount of rainfall. The actual evaporation was estimated using the potential evaporation obtained by Hamon's equation which requires the air temperature and the possible hours of sunshine. When the results of Hamon's and Penman's evaporation equations were compared, a considerable error appeared in the low latitude region. The estimation using Hamon's equation was corrected with the linear regression line of Hamon's and Penman's equations. A classification of the land cover was carried out based on satellite photographs of the target cities, and the volume of surface runoff for each city was obtained using the runoff ratios which depended on the land cover. As a result, the potential water resources in the above mega cities in Asia were found to be greater than the world average. However, the actual water resources which are available for one person to use are probably very limited.