Stormwater management in volcanic islands using dry gallery infiltration systems

Extreme precipitation events are expected to become more frequent in the coming years due to climate change, which together with the continuous development of cities and surface sealing that hinder water infiltration into the subsoil, is accelerating the search for new facilities to manage stormwater. The Canary Islands (Spain) are taking advantage of the knowledge acquired in the construction of water mines to exploit a novel stormwater management facility, which we have defined as a dry gallery. Dry galleries are constituted by a vertical well connected to a horizontal gallery dug into highly permeable volcanic layers of the vadose zone, from where infiltration takes place. However, the lack of scientific knowledge about these facilities prevents them from being properly dimensioned and managed. In this work, we simulate for the first time the infiltration process and the wetting front propagation from dry galleries based on a 3D unsaturated flow model and provide some recommendations for the installation and sizing of these facilities. The results demonstrate that stormwater infiltration from dry galleries is a highly transient process in which a sizing underestimation can be committed if unsaturated conditions or geological configuration are neglected.