Improved Forecasting of Water Demands for South Florida Based on Household and Business Sector Micro-Data

As I examined the water forecasting done by the consultants to the various water management agencies - the US Army Corps of Engineers, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department (WASD)—I became increasingly alarmed.Would there be enough water for the sprawling cities on the east and west coast surrounding the Everglades and for the vast and intensive sugarcane, cattle, and citrus plantations upstream to the north of the Everglades?Would there be any water left for the Everglades itself? The water forecasting method used by the Army Corps of Engineers, or more accurately, by their consultant, simply applied the IWR-MAIN model is a simplistic manner, biasing the forecasts downward, and consistently underestimating the population growth and the water use per capita on the residential side.On the municipal and commercial (M&I) side, the water coefficients were also borrowed from "other cities," with certainly different climates and industrial mixes. No effort had been made to "naturalize" or customize the forecast coefficients to South Florida.