A Technical-Economic Model for Integrated Water Resources Management in Tourism Dependent Arid Coastal Regions
UNESCO-IHE PhD Thesis

The modeling tool is applied to address water management issues in the case study region (Sharm El Sheikh, South-Sinai, Egypt) that suffers from water shortage and that is located near a unique but sensitive marine environment of high ecological value. The main economic activity in the city is tourism.
The modeling tool box is composed of five types of models depending on the specific site situations: water demand/need model, water supply model, wastewater reuse model, environmental model and economic model. The coupling of the models facilitates assessing different scenarios for integrated water resources management including different time-variant domestic and irrigation water demand,  water supply options: long-distance piping and reverse osmosis desalination (RO), potable and non-potable water supply contracts between a hotel and a water company, optimum capacity and expansion for an RO desalination plants, renewable and non-renewable energy sources for RO desalination, and brine disposal options.

1 General Introduction; 2 High water demands; 3 RO desalination and long-distance piping; 4 Solar energy and seawater desalination plants; 5 Water demand by the tourism industry; 6 Water supply for hotels in arid coastal regions; 7 Capacity expansion of reverse osmosis desalination plant; 8 Integrating wastewater reuse; 9 Brine disposal methods from RO desalination plants; 10 Conclusions and recommendations.

Aya lamei joined the American University in Cairo in 1991 where she enrolled in a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Construction Engineering and graduated in 1996. In 1996, she was employed at the Egyptian Construction and Trading Company as a project manager. In the same year, she started an MSc program at the American university in Cairo, majoring in Environmental Engineering. She graduated in 2001.

She worked at the American University in Cairo both as a research and teaching assistant in 2004 and 2007 respectively.

She enrolled in a PhD program at UNESCO-IHE Delft in 2005 doing a research on IWRM for tourism-dominated arid coastal regions . She is currently employed in Schlumberger Water Services, Houston, United States of America as a business development manager.