TY - JOUR N2 - Scarcity of freshwater is one of the major issues which hinders nourishment in large portion of the countries like Ethio-pia. The communities in the Dawe River watershed are facing acute water shortage where water harvesting is vital means of survival. The purpose of this study was to identify optimal water harvesting areas by considering socioeconomic and biophysical factors. This was performed through the integration of soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) model, remote sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technique based on multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). The parame-ters used for the selection of optimal sites for rainwater harvesting were surface runoff, soil texture, land use land cover, slope gradient and stakeholders’ priority. Rainfall data was acquired from the neighbouring weather stations while infor-mation about the soil was attained from laboratory analysis using pipette method. Runoff depth was estimated using SWAT model. The statistical performance of the model in estimating the runoff was revealed with coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.81 and Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) of 0.76 for monthly calibration and R2 of 0.79 and NSE of 0.72 for monthly validation periods. The result implied that there's adequate runoff water to be conserved. Combination of hydrological model with GIS and RS was found to be a vital tool in estimating rainfall runoff and mapping suitable water harvest home sites. L1 - http://www.journals.pan.pl/Content/118297/PDF/Harka%20et%20al%20611.pdf L2 - http://www.journals.pan.pl/Content/118297 PY - 2020 IS - No 47 EP - 195 DO - 10.24425/jwld.2020.135313 KW - Geographic Information System (GIS) KW - rainfall runoff KW - rainwater harvesting KW - soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) KW - the Dawe River watershed KW - the Wabe Shebelle River basin A1 - Harka, Arus E. A1 - Roba, Negash T. A1 - Kassa, Asfaw K. PB - Polish Academy of Sciences; Institute of Technology and Life Sciences - National Research Institute DA - 2020.12.21 T1 - Modelling rainfall runoff for identification of suitable water harvesting sites in Dawe River watershed, Wabe Shebelle River basin, Ethiopia SP - 186 UR - http://www.journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/118297 T2 - Journal of Water and Land Development ER -