Probabilistic Water Demand Forecasting Using Projected Climatic Data for Blue Mountains Water Supply System in Australia (original) (raw)
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2018
Water is one of the most vital resources on earth. Changing climate conditions coupled with growing populations has resulted in an escalating urban water demand thereby making water a scarce resource in many regional and urban centres. Scarcity of water and the ability to meet future water demands is one of the greatest concerns for many governments and public utilities. Residential water consumption represents a significant component of overall water demand. A deeper understanding of residential water consumption variability and its determinants at an end-use level enables the design and implementation of better targeted and more effective urban water conservation strategies, programs and policies. Specifically, it allows for the development of more accurate forecasting models and decision support tools for ensuring urban water security over the long term.
Water (Australia)
AbstrAct A significant body of current scientific literature has found that an increase in temperature and change in rainfall patterns around the globe are due to changes in the climate. These changes are expected to affect the water demand pattern and availability of freshwater resources at local, regional and global scales. In addition, population growth, rapid development in urban areas, other competing demands for water and changes in socio-economic conditions will put additional pressure on the water supply, particularly during prolonged dry spells. Therefore, prediction of the potential future impacts of climatic changes on water demand is crucial to take appropriate measures to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change on water supply and, hence, ensure that water demand is met under prolonged drought periods. This paper evaluates the impact of climate change on residential water demand in the Blue Mountains Water Supply System in New South Wales (NSW). Forecasting is do...
Water Resources Management, 2014
With concerns relating to climate change, and its impacts on water supply, there is an increasing emphasis on water utilities to prepare for the anticipated changes so as to ensure sustainability in supply. Forecasting the water demand, which is done through a variety of techniques using diverse explanatory variables, is the primary requirement for any planning and management measure. However, hitherto, the use of future climatic variables in forecasting the water demand has largely been unexplored. To plug this knowledge gap, this study endeavored to forecast the water demand for the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority (MWA) in Thailand using future climatic and socioeconomic data. Accordingly, downscaled climate data from HadCM3 and extrapolated data of socioeconomic variables was used in the model development, using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The water demand was forecasted at two scales: annual and monthly, up to the year 2030, with good prediction accuracy (AAREs: 4.76 and 4.82 % respectively). Sensitivity analysis of the explanatory variables revealed that climatic variables have very little effect on the annual water demand. However, the monthly demand is significantly affected by climatic variables, and subsequently climate change, confirming the notion that climate change is a major constraint in ensuring water security for the future. Because the monthly water demand is used in designing storage components of the supply system, and planning inter-basin transfers if required, the results of this study provide the MWA with a useful reference for designing the water supply plan for the years ahead. Keywords ANN. Climate change. Climate downscaling. Sensitivity analysis. Thailand. Water demand forecasting 1 Introduction The reliable supply of safe drinking water is the primary objective of any water utility and over the years rapid advances have been made in this regard worldwide. However, with time, the
Use of climate scenarios to aid in decision analysis for interannual water supply planning
2007
This work addresses the issue of climate change in the context of water resource planning on the time scale of a few years. Planning on this time scale generally ignores the role of climate change. However, where the climate of a region has already shifted, the use of historical data for planning purposes may be misleading. In order to test this, a case study is conducted for a region, the Australian Capital Territory, where long term drought is raising concerns of a possible climate shift. The issue is cast in terms of a particular planning decision; the option to augment water supply in the next few years to hedge against the drought persisting. A set of climate scenarios are constructed for the region corresponding to the historical climate regime and to regimes where progressively greater levels of change are assumed to have already taken place (5%, 10%, 20% reductions in mean rainfall). Probabilities of the drought persisting are calculated for each of the scenarios. The results show substantial increases in the probability of the drought persisting for even moderate reductions in mean rainfall. The sensitivity of the decision to augment supply to the scenario results depends ultimately on the planners tolerable thresholds for the probability of the drought persisting. The use of different scenarios enables planners to explore the sensitivity of the decision in terms of their risk tolerance to ongoing drought and to their degree of belief in each of the scenarios tested.
2018
Forecasts of future water demand have a central role in the planning of future water infrastructure. By improving our understanding of demand drivers we can have a direct impact on the accuracy of forecasts leading to more efficient outcomes for infrastructure investment. This paper provides an overview of a crosssectional analysis of household water consumption for the Hunter Water area of operation. Similar results have been achieved in other Australian capital cities and New Zealand. The results suggest that the impact of real changes in household income could be included in some form in medium and long-term forecasts.
Risk‐based water resources planning: Incorporating probabilistic nonstationary climate uncertainties
Water Resources Research, 2014
We present a risk-based approach for incorporating nonstationary probabilistic climate projections into long-term water resources planning. The proposed methodology uses nonstationary synthetic time series of future climates obtained via a stochastic weather generator based on the UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) to construct a probability distribution of the frequency of water shortages in the future. The UKCP09 projections extend well beyond the range of current hydrological variability, providing the basis for testing the robustness of water resources management plans to future climate-related uncertainties. The nonstationary nature of the projections combined with the stochastic simulation approach allows for extensive sampling of climatic variability conditioned on climate model outputs. The probability of exceeding planned frequencies of water shortages of varying severity (defined as Levels of Service for the water supply utility company) is used as a risk metric for water resources planning. Different sources of uncertainty, including demand-side uncertainties, are considered simultaneously and their impact on the risk metric is evaluated. Supply-side and demand-side management strategies can be compared based on how costeffective they are at reducing risks to acceptable levels. A case study based on a water supply system in London (UK) is presented to illustrate the methodology. Results indicate an increase in the probability of exceeding the planned Levels of Service across the planning horizon. Under a 1% per annum population growth scenario, the probability of exceeding the planned Levels of Service is as high as 0.5 by 2040. The case study also illustrates how a combination of supply and demand management options may be required to reduce the risk of water shortages.
Water Resources Research, 2008
1] Climate change may impact water resources management conditions in difficult-to-predict ways. A key challenge for water managers is how to incorporate highly uncertain information about potential climate change from global models into local-and regional-scale water management models and tools to support local planning. This paper presents a new method for developing large ensembles of local daily weather that reflect a wide range of plausible future climate change scenarios while preserving many statistical properties of local historical weather patterns. This method is demonstrated by evaluating the possible impact of climate change on the Inland Empire Utilities Agency service area in southern California. The analysis shows that climate change could impact the region, increasing outdoor water demand by up to 10% by 2040, decreasing local water supply by up to 40% by 2040, and decreasing sustainable groundwater yields by up to 15% by 2040. The range of plausible climate projections suggests the need for the region to augment its long-range water management plans to reduce its vulnerability to climate change.
This paper is based on a research project with the aim of developing a suitable model for future water consumption in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. The project"s main aims were to, systematically, investigate the contributory factors in water usage and then build a mathematical model for prediction and performing sensitivity analysis. Water is without any doubt the most important resource used in farming, industrial and domestic applications. Hence, this project is timely and very appropriate in terms of meeting the needs of the community in and around Toowoomba.
2013
Today's big city water utility companies are experiencing high level of water loss due to various problems in covering a large scale of water supply pipeline networks, therefore any significant improvement of water loss prevention from supply network to treatment plant would require an apprehends stochastic nature of historical water demand and supply pattern. For this reason urban water demand forecasting is one of key important parameters used when water utility companies are trying to find more efficient and robust ways of supplying water for a large number of urban consumers. Water demand forecasting also plays a significant role in managing and planning water supply operations and water conservation and optimization strategies. However, traditional forecasting approaches based on a set of deterministic design capacity factors or using demand forecasting algorithms without evaluating the relationship between supply reliability in response to the stochastic nature of historic...
Risk assessment of a water supply system under climate variability: a stochastic approach
Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 2011
A model is developed to assess risk to a municipal water supply system under the influence of population growth and climate variability. To incorporate the uncertainty in water use, a model that combines time series Monte Carlo simulations and a deterministic artificial neural network (ANN) is developed to simulate the daily water demand under climate variation. The model is first applied to assess how climate change alters the risk of a current water supply system and is then used to estimate the effects of demand management programs and system expansion. The model quantifies water supply system risk in terms of reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability (RRV). The model evaluates 11 scenarios defined by combining various population growth forecasts, demand management programs, system expansions, and global climate model (GCM) scenarios. The simulation results suggest that a rise in temperature and a change in precipitation magnitude will negatively impact the performance of the ca...