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Abstract

Rainwater Harvesting Systems (RWHS) have several advantages when compared to other water supply alternatives in urban areas. These systems have been proved to facilitate the path toward some targets of the sixth Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6). The dissemination of RWHS in urban areas reduce the demand for centralized water supply systems, improve the water access for disadvantaged communities and it can have benefits for the urban drainage system. However, there are specific conditions for both the communities and the water utility in which the systems are more beneficial. This study proposed guidelines for public policies to facilitate the dissemination of RWHS in Brazil. The work initiated defining a procedure to select cities in the state of Goiás. The second step of the work proposed a methodology to evaluate the impacts of RWHS dissemination in the water utility sustainability.Considering results from a previous evaluation of the impacts for household owners, this study selected cities for the application of the whole procedure based on the following criteria: water safety index, number of inhabitants and average annual rainfall. Additionally, the feasibility of RWHS was tested in the context of deep uncertainties and applied to the city of Formosa.We verified that water savings when deploying RWHS to a large number of users may improve local water security. Despite the variation in the demand required from the water utility throughout the year, rainwater harvesting may benefit from public policy that improve urban water supply and make cities more sustainable.