Rainwater harvesting is a promising tool for supplementing surface water and groundwater to overcome the imbalance between water supply and demand under changing climate conditions. Multi-Criteria Evaluation is one of the well-known methods of decision-making. In this study, the geographical information system (GIS)-based Multi-Criteria Evaluation is used to select the optimum rainwater harvesting sites in Maysan province, Iraq. Fuzzy membership is used for standardization of the criteria, and Fuzzy Gamma overlay for a combination of multi-layers using ArcGIS 10.5. Seven criteria layers, including slope, stream order, soil type, precipitation, evaporation, roads, and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are derived to identify rainwater-harvesting catchment. The results determined the optimum sites for water storage within the study area. The resultant potential rainwater harvesting catchment map can be used as a reference to enhance the effectiveness of water management, especially in drought-stricken areas that offer significant potential for sustainable agricultural production in the semi-arid region.

The aims of this study are to investigate the thermophysical behaviour of various urban land use/land cover (LULC) surfaces in an urban environment, and to examine the relationship between field measurements and remotely sensed data. Perth metropolitan area has been used as a test case. Two sets of surface albedo and land surface temperature (LST) measurements were taken at different locations on a variety of urban LULC surfaces using two procedures. Firstly, field measurements were made with a pyranometer and a hand-held infrared camera. Secondly, a Landsat 8 image was used to create maps of estimated surface albedo and LST. A new adjustment method was applied to the field measurements to adjust them to satellite overpass time. The results demonstrate that surface albedo and LST are influential factors in determining the thermal characteristics of LULC surfaces. Some built-up areas have a negative effect on the urban environment of Perth compared with non-built-up categories. The correlation between adjusted field work and Landsat 8 data is in strong agreement for surface albedo, and reasonably strong for land surface temperature.

Surface albedo, is a key parameter controlling the local energy budget, which in turn plays an important role in mitigating the effect of urban heat islands. This paper aimed to examine the relationship of surface albedo to major land cover categories, which include built-up areas, green covers, water bodies, and bare land. This study provides a new approach by using a 30 m spatial resolution of Landsat data over the study area, Baghdad, and relating surface albedo to the metrics of four biophysical parameters: Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Modified Normalised Difference Water Index (MNDWI), Normalised Difference Build-up Index (NDBI) and Normalised Difference Barren Index (NDBaI). A linear regression was generated to assess the correlation of surface albedo with these four biophysical parameters, and the results showed a strong positive correlation between surface albedo and both NDBI, and the NDBal (r = 0.62 and r = 0.95, respectively), and a moderate correlation with NDVI (r = 0.4). There was also a strong negative correlation of surface albedo with MNDWI (r = – 0.81).