Rural groundwater supply for the Volcanoes National Park region, Rwanda

Water scarcity is a major issue faced by both developed and developing countries. According to the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations, the number of people that do not have access to an improved water supply should be halved by the year 2015. Rwanda is a Sub-Saharan developing country where water scarcity is an issue. This thesis presents results from a preliminary evaluation of possible groundwater supply to the village of Bisate, located in the Northern Province of Rwanda. Suffering from the "walk for water", the Bisate community has to give up vital activities such as school and agriculture in order to fetch water. During the dry season, the people are obliged to go into the Volcanoes National Park to get water from springs and swamps, disrupting the fragile ecosystem by the human activity. All these factors make it important to provide water at the point of use. Since the region receives a considerable amount of rain and the groundwater recharge rate is high (0.3 m/year), groundwater supply could be a feasible alternative for the Bisate community. For this thesis, three major tasks were achieved.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Zoghbi, Christiane A. (Christiane Antoine)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Peter Shanahan.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39272

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39272