4. Results and discussion
4.1. Status of roof rainwater harvesting in Jordan
Since the early 1995s, harvesting of rainwater
has become a government strategy for water
sector development in most parts of Jordan, and
the construction of rainwater harvesting cisterns
has been extensively implemented to deal with
the serious situation of water scarcity. According
to the Population and Housing Census of 2004
[9], about 33,229 rainwater cisterns with an
average volume of 20 m3 have been built in
Jordanian governorates (Table 1) and used as a
main source of drinking water. Table 1 shows the
distribution of occupied housing units by main
sources of drinking water. Only 3.5% of the residential
units in Jordan used rainwater harvesting
as the main source for drinking. The majority of
the housing units (82.4%) depend on the public
network as a source for drinking water. Table 2
shows the distribution of water harvesting
cisterns in the different governorates. About
91.8% of the rainwater harvesting wells is constructed
in the northern region, while about 7.4%