Decision-Support System for Domestic Water Demand Forecasting and Management

A decision support system (DFMS) for forecastingdomestic water demand including demand management was developedas part of a highly integrated decision-support system forriver-basin management. The system provides water resourcesplanners with the facilities for estimating future water demandfor domestic use for any demand region and time period, havingregard, to the possibility of introducing demand managementmeasures. The system has the capability of predicting domestic-water demand by various methods according to data availability.It can compute conservation effectiveness due to theimplementation of various demand-management measures,forecasting the number of customers for different consumptionunits (person, household and water connection) and facilitatingthe development of demand-scenarios for evaluating variousoptions. In general, the system comprises of the followingcomponents: (1) geographic information system, (2) databasemanagement system, (3) expert system, (4) multi-decisioncomponent, (5) prediction models, (6) user-interface, (7) hypertext files. The system has been tested and demonstratedusing the data of Swindon demand zone of Thames Water Utility. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001