Flexible and deterministic household water saving under water demand uncertainty: existing water distribution system and sanitary sewer perspectives

Abstract

Abstract An integrated method that evaluates conflicting hydraulic performances of water distribution systems (WDSs) and sanitary sewers (SSs) considering water-saving schemes (WSSs) under fixed (deterministic) or uncertain water demands was formulated. WSSs considered include household water-saving fixtures and appliances whose water flows impact water distribution system (WDS) and sanitary sewer (SS) hydraulic performances in different ways. In the proposed flexible approach, a multi-objective optimisation problem was formulated and solved considering trade-offs of three objectives: (1) maximisation of the average cost savings (2) maximisation of the average WDS resilience index and (3) minimisation of the average SS self-cleansing velocity deficit factor. The decision variables include water-saving fixture and appliance capacities that are applied in a deterministic or flexible manner at a household level. The constraints include WDS and SS hydraulic requirements together with decision bounds of the available water-saving scheme capacities. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm was used to obtain trade-off solutions. This method was demonstrated in the corresponding WDS and SS network subsystems of Tsholofelo extension in Gaborone, Botswana. The results indicate that WSSs lead to visibly conflicting WDS and SS hydraulic performances. Moreover, considering the uncertainty inherent in water demand and the corresponding planning and management of WDSs and SSs provides more sustainable solutions as demand uncertainties unveil.