Quantification of Water Savings due to Drought Restrictions in Water Demand Forecasting Models
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 140, Issue 11
Abstract
This paper presents a technique to quantify water savings due to implementation of water restrictions by adopting water restriction indexes as a continuous numerical predictor variable in regression analysis. The adopted modeling technique compares four methods: yearly base difference method, weighted average method, before and after method, and expected use method. These methods are applied to single and multiple dwelling residential sectors in the Blue Mountains region, Australia. In the study, three forms of multiple regression techniques are adopted: raw data, semi-log, and log-log. The model performances are evaluated by a number of statistics such as relative error, Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient, and percentage bias. Moreover, the potential of using the water restriction savings and water conservation savings as continuous predictor variables in the water demand forecasting model is investigated. The performances of different modeling techniques are evaluated using split-sample and leave-one-out cross-validation methods. The yearly base difference method is found to quantify the water savings more accurately in that the savings due to Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 water restrictions are found to be approximately 9, 18, and 20%, respectively, for the single dwelling residential sector and approximately 4, 8, and 9%, respectively, for the multiple dwelling residential sector. The semi-log model coupled with yearly base difference method is found to perform the best in predicting water demand for both the single and multiple dwelling residential sectors with a relative error of about 3%.
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Acknowledgments
Water consumption data were obtained from Sydney Water on May 4, 2012. The best available data at the time of study have been used, which may be updated in near future. Daily rainfall and temperature data were obtained from Sydney Catchment Authority. The authors express their sincere thanks to Pei Tillman and Frank Spaninks of Sydney Water for their assistance in collating and providing the data. Further, the authors are very grateful to Lucinda Maunsell and Peter Cox of Sydney Water and Mahes Maheswaran of Sydney Catchment Authority for their cooperation and assistance during data collation and analysis.
Disclaimer
Opinions or comments presented in this paper are only of authors and do not reflect, in any way, that of any of the organizations mentioned in this paper.
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 140 • Issue 11 • November 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 2, 2013
Accepted: Nov 19, 2013
Published online: Nov 21, 2013
Discussion open until: Oct 22, 2014
Published in print: Nov 1, 2014
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