Water Demand Management

This report summarises the findings from PhD research carried out by Claire Hoolohan, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Thames Water, and supervised by Alice Larkin (Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester) and Alison Browne (University of Manchester).

The findings explore alternative framings of water efficiency intervention that step away from conventional psycho-economic approaches that are favoured in the water industry, towards those that contribute to social, cultural and technological change to bring about more sustainable patterns of everyday water use. The research is based on Case studies of two innovative case study initiatives, interviews with stakeholders across the water industry and workshops with representatives from across the water companies.

For more information contact the author: claire.hoolohan@manchester.ac.uk

The increasing water demand along with the constant threat of water scarcity requires
considering the complexity of the links among the various activities carried out in a basin.
This implies that decision makers must know the potential uses of water and its current
distribution considering the social, economic and environmental dimension from a
comprehensive perspective. In response to this need, the aim of this research is to propose
the concept of “Basin Vocation” from the principles of Integrated Water Resources
Management, local and sustainable development. For this, it designed a review using a
deductive method considering two research assumptions: a) The basin vocation must be the
guiding principle and, b) its determination must be under a comprehensive methodology.
Basin vocation was defined as the use or set of water uses from a basin that integrate
synergistically the social, economic and environmental benefits, within the possibilities
offered by the system of material support, and consistent with the basin local development
objective. It’s concluded that the basin vocation can be an essential tool to ensure the
sustainability of water resource management and promote coherent local development with
historical tradition and lifestyle of the community.
Key words: Integrated Water Resources Management, Water

Water scarcity is one of the utmost issues and challenges of the 21st century. It is not only thequantity aspect causing the main problems, but furthermore the quality, distribution and thewasteful management. Estimated climate change, population growth and economicdevelopments further strain available water sources. As the Middle East and North Africa is aregion of great interest to me, this paper presents an overall introductory on the watersituation in Egypt. Basic country and water characteristics are presented, followed by someproject examples and current solutions.

This volume presents the Islamic perspectives on a number of proposed water-management policies, including water demand management, wastewater reuse, and higher tariffs. The book opens avenues for a wider dialogue amongst researchers working at identifying the most promising water management policies, adds to our knowledge of some of the influences on formal policy and informal practice, and makes these ideals available to a broader public. It serves as a concrete example of the benefit of examining development on the context of values and culture. Its also dispels common misconceptions about the Islamic view on water management practices such as selling water and wastewater reuse.

Water Management in Islam will interest researchers, scholars, and students in natural resource management, Islamic studies, Middle Eastern studies, development studies, and public policy. It will also be of interest to professionals, including policy makers in donor organizations, development organizations, NGO’s and government departments and agencies, both North and South, working in the area of water management.

The present document is an intrapreneurship proposal for reducing significantly the water consumption of selected domestic households by building customised rainwater collection systems. The value proposition for the client is to generate sufficiently high volumes of usable water from rain with the intention of significantly reducing water bills and sustaining a sufficiently large stock for drought periods.  The business intention is to create a wholly-owned subsidiary business unit, called “FreeRain”, operating with the existing resources of Sotravic Ltée in order to contribute profitable revenue and at the same time formalise the training process of direct labour – specifically pipe layers – within the company. The business venture will be operated from the head office of Sotravic itself, and will cover all the sites where the company is awarded the construction of reticulation (water or sewerage) networks.

The amount of electricity generation and its availability to the residents of a country reflects its level of development and economic condition. Water being one of the cheapest and renewable sources of energy, is being used to produce one-quarter of the total electricity production in Pakistan. This article presents a forecasting study of hydroelectricity consumption in Pakistan based on the historical data of past 53 years using Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving-Average (ARIMA) modeling. Based on the developed forecasting equation, the hydroelectricity consumption was predicted up to the year 2030. For validating the reliability of the forecasted data, the results were compared to the actual values which showed good fit with minimum deviation. The forecasted values of hydroelectricity consumption revealed an average annual increment of 1.65% with a cumulative increase of 23.4% up to the year 2030. The results were compared with the hydroelectricity generation plans of the Government of Pakistan for its effectiveness. A sensitivity analysis was also performed to study the relation of hydroelectricity consumption to the annual population and GDP growth rate of the country. The research shall significantly prove to be useful in better planning and management of water resources of Pakistan for future.

This research report “Assessment of Future Water Efficiency Measures” has been developed by the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), University of Technology Sydney, on behalf of the three Melbourne retailers, Melbourne Water, Barwon Water and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. The rapid study does not aim to be exhaustive but to begin to gather information to assist in taking stock of the current efficiency situation and to look on the horizon in terms of how efficiency might change. It aims to gather information that will be useful to assist in testing alternative potential scenarios of long term demand forecasts and new potential short and long term efficiency program opportunities that can be actioned when deemed appropriate into the future. There is significant additional conservation potential available as we look to the future in terms of new more efficient appliances and ways to interact with customers by tapping into new technical and behavioural opportunities.

The rapid study has scanned and collated information on the programs undertaken both in Victoria and interstate, and to a limited extent internationally, together with information on the latest innovations in terms of water efficient appliances, behaviour change and digital metering interfaces. The research draws on recent research conducted by ISF, information provided by the funding agencies, information gleaned from ISF’s international network of advisors, and interviews with water efficiency experts, manufacturers and practitioners.

Evaluation of supply chain of water consumption contributes toward reducing water scarcity, as it allows for increased water productivity in the agricultural sector. Water Footprint (WF) is a powerful tool for water management; it accounts for the volume of water consumption at high spatial and temporal resolution. The objective of this research is to investigate the water footprint trend of crop production in Tehran from 2008 to 2015 and to assess blue water scarcity in the agricultural sector. Water consumption of crop production was evaluated based on the WF method. Evapotranspiration was evaluated by applying the CROPWAT model. Blue water scarcity was evaluated using the blue water footprint-to-blue water availability formula. The results demonstrate that pistachio, cotton, walnut, almond, and wheat have a large WF, amounting to 11.111 m 3 /kg, 4,703 m 3 /kg, 3,932 m 3 /kg, 3,217 m 3 /kg, and 1.817 m 3 /kg, respectively. Agricultural blue water scarcity amounted to 0.6 (severe water stress class) (2015-2016). Agricultural water consumption in Tehran is unsustainable since it contributes to severe blue water scarcity. Tehran should reduce agricultural water scarcity by reducing the water footprint of the agricultural sector.

This Guide lays out a way to undertake urban water planning, using a consistent framework, which creates benefits for the whole community. It was originally developed by the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology Sydney for the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) and has been updated with the support of the Australian Government’s National Water Commission (NWC). The Guide is intended for both WSAA members and the broader Australian water industry.

Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) is the foundation of the Guide. Internationally, IRP is considered a best practice planning framework for urban water. It has been used to varying extents by water utilities, councils and water resource managers across Australia since the early 1990s. In several Australian jurisdictions, IRP is embedded as a policy and/or regulatory requirement.

IRP considers both demand and supply-side options and treats them equally when determining how to close the supply–demand gap. The Australian water industry is now experiencing a growing need to better understand the demand for water. Specifically, practitioners need new skills in detailed demand forecasting and how to develop, implement and evaluate demand management options. In response to this, the Guide presents introductory material on these subjects within the context of an overall IRP process.

The forecasting of future value of water consumption in an urban area is highly complex and nonlinear. It often exhibits a high degree of spatial and temporal variability. It is a crucial factor for long-term sustainable management and improvement of the operation of urban water allocation system. This chapter will study the application of two preprocessing phase space reconstruction (PSR) and wavelet decomposition transform (WDT) methods to investigate the behavior of time series to forecast short-term water demand value of Kelowna City (BC, Canada). The research proposes two pre-process technique to improve the accuracy of the models. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), gene expression programming (GEP) and multi linear regression (MLR) methods are the tools that considered for forecasting the demand values. Evaluation of the tools is based on two steps with and without applying the pre-processing methods. Moreover, auto correlation function (ACF) is used to calculate the lag time. Correlation dimension is used to study the chaotic behavior of the dataset. The models’ relative performance is compared using three different fitness indexes; coefficient of determination (CD), root mean square error (RMSE)
and mean absolute error (MAE). The results showed how pre-processing combination of WDT and PSR improved the performance of the models in forecasting short-term demand values.

Based on panel data from the City of Davis, California, comprising more than 15,000 urban water consumption units and 81 billing periods over 13 years, this study investigates residential water demand and the effectiveness of three structural water conservation measures. An instrumental fixed effects regression analysis results in a price elasticity of -0.19 for residential consumers. The data also suggests that all structural tariff adjustments were effective, even if data for the general economic situation was included. This is the first study which demonstrates the effectiveness of coupling the sewer rate with a proxy for indoor water consumption on a household level.

This paper investigates the properties of rice husk ash (RHA) produced by using a ferro-cement furnace. The effect of grinding on the particle size and the surface area was first investigated, then the XRD analysis was conducted to verify the presence of amorphous silica in the ash. Furthermore, the effect of RHA average particle size and percentage on concrete workability, fresh density, superplasticizer (SP) content and the compressive strength were also investigated. Although grinding RHA would reduce its average particle size (APS), it was not the main factor controlling the surface area and it is thus resulted from RHA's multilayered, angular and microporous surface. Incorporation of RHA in concrete increased water demand. RHA concrete gave excellent improvement in strength for 10% replacement (30.8% increment compared to the control mix), and up to 20% of cement could be valuably replaced with RHA without adversely affecting the strength. Increasing RHA fineness enhanced the strength of blended concrete compared to coarser RHA and control OPC mixtures. © 2010.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1516-14392010000200011&script=sci_arttext

Hoolohan, C., 2016. Reframing water efficiency: towards interventions that reconfigure the shared and collective aspects of everyday water use. A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Full thesis available online: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/56365266/FULL_TEXT.PDF

The purpose of this study was to explore the predominant determinants of shower end use consumption and to find an overarching research design for building a residential water end use demand forecasting model using aligned socio-demographic and natural science data sets collected from 200 households fitted with smart water meters in South-east Queensland, Australia. ANOVA as well as multiple regression analysis statistical techniques were utilised to reveal the determinants (e.g. household makeup, shower fixture efficiency, income, education, etc.) of household shower consumption. Results of a series of one-way independent ANOVA extended into linear multiple regression models revealed that females, children in general and teenagers in particular, and the showerhead efficiency level were statistically significant determinants of shower end use consumption. Eight-way independent factorial ANOVA extended into a three-tier hierarchical linear multiple regression model, was used to create a shower end use forecasting model, and indicated that household size and makeup, as well as the showerhead efficiency rating, are the most significant predictors of shower usage. The generated multiple regression model was deemed reliable, explaining 90.2% of the variation in household shower end use consumption. The paper concludes with a discussion on the significant shower end use determinants and how this statistical approach will be followed to predict other residential end uses, and overall household consumption. Moreover, the implications of the research to urban water conservation strategies and policy design, is discussed, along with future research directions.

This report documents the proceedings of a workshop designed to re-imagine water company water efficiency activities. Focussing specifically on behaviour change, where a growing body of social science research calls for fresh approaches ; de-centred from individual consumers and inclusive of social, technical and natural elements (Browne, 2014; Shove, 2003; Strengers, 2011; Sofoulis, 2014). 

In the workshop water efficiency experts worked together in small groups to map water intensive domestic practices and design initiatives, aiming to reconfigure consumer expectations of water and socio-technical context.

This report contains an overview of the theory and research findings that provide a jumping off-point for these discussions, along with an overview of the three initiatives designed by the teams. These provide early ideas as to what innovative approaches to behaviour change might incorporate and aim to provoke and sustain a conversation between academics and the water industry.

Feedback to the author is actively encouraged!

Paper identifies  gaps  in  knowledge  and  understanding  concerning personal  washing behaviours and technologies, focussing on showering and bathing in particular due to their contribution to per capita consumption. The  review synthesizes  the  existing  evidence  base  and provides recommendations  for project design,  regulation and  policy decisions in relation to managing demand.

Full text available: http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol11/v11issue3/472-a11-3-25/file

Reimagining spaces of innovation for water efficiency and demand management: An exploration of professional practices in the English water sector. Water Alternatives 11(3): 957-978 Hoolohan and Browne: An exploration of professional practices in the English water sector ABSTRACT: Social practice theories have established an important counter narrative to conventional accounts of demand. The core argument of this body of research is that, having focused on informing and incentivising behavioural change, demand management has largely neglected the social and material dimensions of everyday action that shape how and why resources are used. Despite making a compelling case for reframing demand management, there is limited evidence of practice-based approaches having gained a foothold in policy and business practices. This raises important questions regarding how and why certain modes of intervention are pursued at the expense of others and, more broadly, the factors that shape the pace and direction of innovation in demand management. In this paper we turn a practice-lens towards the professional practices of demand management. Using mixed methods, we demonstrate how specific modes of intervention emerge as priorities within a social, political, semiotic and material landscape of professional practice. Our empirical analysis highlights four particular contingencies of demand management that constrain the scope of interventions pursued. These are industry expectations and ideals; modes of collaboration; processes of evidencing action; and hydrosocial disturbances. We discuss the implications of these findings, making suggestions as to how innovation in the practices of demand management might be facilitated, and the role of academic research in this process.

Based on the hypothesis that variables such as the cost of water, family income, household size and building typology affect the way water is consumed, this paper describes the results obtained from fieldwork and discusses domestic water consumption for different residential building types of high, mid-high, mid-low and low income dwellings in the Federal District. An econometric model and correlation analysis, using primary data collected in fieldwork, have been estimated for a water demand function in order to understand what lies behind domestic water consumption in the Federal District. The correlation analysis carried out shows a good relationship between indoor water consumption and built area (0.63), dwelling income (0.49), and number of residents (0.37). Estimated water consumption function has shown a relationship between dwelling income and built area. Through multiple regression, indoor and outdoor water consumption functions were estimated for the Federal District. The coefficient of cost of water presented a positive relationship showing that water demand is inelastic to water price due to the fact that water tariff is low, there is no substitute for water, and water tariff represents a small fraction of household income. This study has shown that domestic water consumption increases proportionally to the increase in household income and that it is a function of income, cost of water, household size and typological characteristics of built area.

The water services system is unsustainable in its current form as it does not make sustainable use of the water resource, nor is the service economically and socially sustainable (Naidoo, 1999). Any Local Agenda 21 programme undertaken by any local authority in South Africa will have to
acknowledge that current water use patterns need to be audited and changed to render them sustainable. Auditing and changing the way in which water is used in South Africa should be done within the framework of water demand management and least cost integrated planning. Both the
compelling reasons for water demand management and least cost integrated planning, as well as the constraints to their implementation in urban areas are outlined. Policies designed to overcome these constraints will have to be drawn up in order to ensure that environmental, social and economic sustainability is achieved.

This report was commissioned by the Greater London Authority.  The feasibility of a sub-metering programme in the Greater London Area is explored via four international case city studies. The paper comments on the failures and successes associated with sub-metering, and provides initial guidance for further research and approaches to implementation in London.

This presentation presents the method used to co-design Change Points (changepoints.net), and the things we found along the way.

Change Points is a toolkit for finding innovative interventions for less resource-intensive ways of living. We provide a practice-based approach, with its roots in the literature on social practice theories and sustainable consumption.

Change Points was, and is, a collaborative project. All partners actively participated in the design and testing of the toolkit. I describe this process, and why it was necessary in this presentation.

Invited presentation at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. Jan 24th 2019.

Any questions, get in touch via email.

Much more detail is available on the project website: changepoints.net

This study was commissioned with the aim of estimating the potential reduction in water consumption in social  housing  stock  through  water  efficiency  retrofits,  and  in  particular  through  the  delivery  avenue  of  an  updated  Decent  Homes  Standard  which  would  include  water  efficiency  criteria  for  water  using  fixtures  and  fittings.  Currently,  the  Decent  Homes  standard  is  measured  against  the  age  and  basic  performance  of bathroom  and  kitchen fittings, but makes no comment on their water efficiency. Nor does the Decent Homes standard allow for  the installation of showers where baths are present, due to a like-for-like replacement policy. The survey showed  that it is likely that approximately 80% of social housing properties  own at least one bath and have no shower installed.  Showers and toilets were considered the priority for analysis due to the potential carbon, energy, and utility cost savings possible through hot water savings in showers, and due to the large volumes of water savings through toilet upgrades.

Water demand projections produced by water utilities and state and federal agencies call for increases in municipal water demand. These projections rely on the so-called " requirements approach, " and typically assume an arbitrary floor on per capita demand, sometimes resulting in projections that diverge from recent trends. Seasonal trend and breakpoint analysis are used to investigate trends in four New Mexico municipalities where increases in demand are projected: Albuquerque, Clovis, Rio Rancho and Edgewood. Analysis points to declining aggregate and per premises water demand – typically for both residential and industrial users. Despite spatial proximity and similar climates, existence and reason for series breaks differs by municipality. While Albuquerque and Edgewood experienced no breaks, Clovis and Rio Rancho experienced breaks. Clovis breakpoints are likely to due to drought conditions, while Rio Rancho's break is confined to high volume users and is likely related to rate increases. Given the general decline in aggregate and premises-level municipal water demand over the period of interest, this study suggests that demand trends over the last decade are likely not fully accounted-for in near-term demand projections. Failing to account for recent trends can lead to costly overinvestment in infrastructure or unnecessary supply augmentation.

The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin conflict officially began in 1989 and despite ongoing declarations of readiness to seek a negotiated outcome to the conflict, there is still no end in sight. In fact, 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of this conflict. In this paper, we depart from conventional explanations of the crisis and propose an alternative theoretical point of entry to draw attention to the key structural forces driving water accumulation strategies in the basin. In doing so, we turn to David Harvey’s theoretical framework of capitalist growth and crisis to present an alternative understanding of the water conflict. By adopting this framework, we will reveal how the most dominant political and economic actor in the conflict, metro-Atlanta, has devised a series of spatial and temporal strategies to delay and displace a resolution while simultaneously using the impasse to entrench its economic and territorial interests to secure as much water as possible from the ACF water basin. The paper emphasises the crisis of capitalism in the form of suburbanisation in metro-Atlanta as the primary context in which the water conflict exists.

Quantitative research was undertaken in Gauteng to establish the current baseline of water conservation knowledge and practice amongst urban South African children, in both high and low income groups. It was found that most children do not seriously engage in any water conservation activities. The success of numerous water education programmes aimed at this target group was impeded by the failure of the programmes to consider sound social marketing theory, most notably in terms of the community environment in which the children reside and thus the programmes do not attempt to counter or alter the normative influence of the neighbourhood or society.

Water demand forecasting is a nonlinear and non-stationary process. Different variables affect the value of demand directly or indirectly. These variables have non-stationary behavior relates to the demand time series, which should be considered in forecasting of water demand. Thus, in the first stage, chaotic behavior of water demand data was investigated to determine the number of effective variables by the value of correlation exponent. Then, the nonlinear process of water demand was forecasted by nonlinear local approximation (NLA) method using reconstructed phase space of input variables. Next, to improve the accuracy of the method, selected embedding dimension of input variables was decomposed by wavelet transformers. The application of phase space reconstruction (PSR) and wavelet decomposition were compared with the results of the models without pre-processing to evaluate their application in improving the models' accuracy in forecasting water consumption of Kelowna City (BC, Canada). The results showed that NLA forecasted more accurate than the results in previous literature in the same case study.

With growing demand and highly variable inter-annual water supplies, California's water use future is fraught with uncertainty. Climate change projections, anticipated population growth, and continued agricultural intensification, will likely stress existing water supplies in coming decades. Using a state-and-transition simulation modeling approach, we examine a broad suite of spatially explicit future land use scenarios and their associated county-level water use demand out to 2062. We examined a range of potential water demand futures sampled from a 20-year record of historical (1992–2012) data to develop a suite of potential future land change scenarios, including low/high change scenarios for urbanization and agriculture as well as " lowest of the low " and " highest of the high " anthropogenic use. Future water demand decreased 8.3 billion cubic meters (Bm 3) in the lowest of the low scenario and decreased 0.8 Bm 3 in the low agriculture scenario. The greatest increased water demand was projected for the highest of the high land use scenario (+9.4 Bm 3), high agricultural expansion (+4.6 Bm 3), and high urbanization (+2.1 Bm 3) scenarios. Overall, these scenarios show agricultural land use decisions will likely drive future demand more than increasing municipal and industrial uses, yet improved efficiencies across all sectors could lead to potential water use savings. Results provide water managers with information on diverging land use and water use futures, based on historical, observed land change trends and water use histories.

This online textbook is freely available from http://www.naturaledgeproject.net/sustainable_water_solutions_portfolio.aspx

Peer reviewed by over 50 international and national water experts, this is the largest free online sustainable urban water solutions textbook to help water professionals adapt to climate change. Water management decisions made over the next decade will have significant impacts on national economic, environmental and social well-being in light of reduced availability and unreliable supply of water due to Climate Change. There is a need to focus on urban water usage and the rapid urban development occurring along coastal zones that are raising many complex water, natural resource management, engineering and planning challenges. Adapting to climate change will require significant professional skills development in urban, coastal and industrial water resource management and supply to address changes to water availability and rising sea levels, and this is the primary focus of this proposal. This project has been developed in consultation with a number of collaborating partners, many representing important end users of the training material. The material will undergo a rigorous review by over 50 Engineers, Architects, Water Professionals and Academics across the collaborating Professional Institutions, Universities, Government Agencies, Industry and NGO collaborators. The result is a comprehensive guide to urban water sensitive design, demand management, water efficiency and alternative water sources.