Abstract
Knowledge of when, how, and by whom water is being used is crucial for planning ways to conserve drinking water. The goal of this paper is to identify groups of similar households (whom) based on their regular high-magnitude behaviors (RHMBs) of water consumption (when and how). RHMBs are frequent recurrences of high water use with regular timing. Household RHMBs are promising targets for behavior change. A two-stage data analytics approach is proposed. First, smart meter data is analyzed to identify RHMBs automatically. Second, salient features of the RHMBs are used to group households with similar behaviors. The approach is evaluated on two contrasting towns from low-rainfall regions of Australia. RHMBs accounted for 2 to 10 times more water than the traditional water efficiency target of continuous flows. For one group of 220 households, 60% of peak-hour demand was RHMBs. This paper demonstrates how RHMBs can be used to pinpoint opportunities for tailored demand management. Targets for substantial reductions in water consumption and supply costs are identified.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Steve Atkinson, Garry Peach, Ben Jarvis, Kel Medbury, Richard Pickering, and Nathan Harper at the Water Corporation of Western Australia for the smart meter datasets and for their advice on interpreting them. This research is funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRCWSC) under Intelligent Urban Water Systems (Project C5.1) with additional research and development funding from the Water Corporation. The authors thank colleagues across the CRCWSC programs for their feedback on this project. This research has been approved by the Human Research Ethics Office (HREO) of the University of Western Australia (RA/4/1/6253).
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 142 • Issue 6 • June 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 18, 2015
Accepted: Nov 5, 2015
Published online: Jan 19, 2016
Published in print: Jun 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Jun 19, 2016
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