Sustainability of Underground Hydro-Technologies: From Ancient to Modern Times and toward the Future

Mohammad Valipour, Abdelkader T. Ahmed, Georgios P. Antoniou, Renato Sala, Mario Parise, Miquel Salgot, Negar Sanaan Bensi and Andreas N. Angelakis
Additional contact information
Mohammad Valipour: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Water Resources Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
Abdelkader T. Ahmed: Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Aswan University, Aswan, Egypt
Georgios P. Antoniou: Department of Architecture Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 11474 Athens, Greece
Renato Sala: Laboratory of Geoarchaeology, Faculty of History, Archaeology and Ethnology, Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Mario Parise: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University Aldo Moro, 70125 Bari, Italy
Miquel Salgot: Environmental Health and Soil Science Unit, Facultat de Farmàcia, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Negar Sanaan Bensi: Architecture Department, Technical University of Delft, 2600 Delft, The Netherlands
Andreas N. Angelakis: HAO-Demeter, Agricultural Research Institution of Crete, 71300 Iraklion and Union of Water Supply and Sewerage Enterprises, 41222 Larissa, Greece

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 21, 1-31

Abstract: An underground aqueduct is usually a canal built in the subsurface to transfer water from a starting point to a distant location. Systems of underground aqueducts have been applied by ancient civilizations to manage different aspects of water supply. This research reviews underground aqueducts from the prehistoric period to modern times to assess the potential of achieving sustainable development of water distribution in the sectors of agriculture and urban management, and provides valuable insights into various types of ancient underground systems and tunnels. The review illustrates how these old structures are a testament of ancient people’s ability to manage water resources using sustainable tools such as aqueducts, where the functionality works by using, besides gravity, only “natural” engineering tools like inverted siphons. The study sheds new light on human’s capability to collect and use water in the past. In addition, it critically analyzes numerous examples of ancient/historic/pre-industrial underground water supply systems that appear to have remained sustainable up until recent times. The sustainability of several underground structures is examined, correlated to their sound construction and regular maintenance. Moreover, several lessons can be learned from the analysis of ancient hydraulic works, particularly now, as many periodically hydrologic crises have occurred recently, overwhelmingly impacted by climate change and/or over-exploitation and degradation of available water resources.

Keywords: aqueduct; groundwater; qanat; water supply; water and humans; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/8983/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/8983/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:21:p:8983-:d:436774

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().