Forecasting Urban Peak Water Demand Based on Climate Indices and Demographic Trends

Abstract

Austria’s water utilities are facing new challenges due to advancing climate change. In recent years, changes in water demand have been observed. Water demand forecast models are required to assess these changes and react to them in a sustainable way. In this study, an existing modeling approach was extended with new climate indices. The multiple linear regression model was applied to different study sites. The model was trained with a training dataset and validated with a test dataset. The performance of the model was assessed using common parameters, such as the mean absolute percentage error. In a further step, the modeling approach was applied to climate projections to estimate the change in water demand for three different representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The change in water demand due to population growth was then considered and combined with the change due to climate change. RCP2.6 shows an average 14% increase in water demand for the period 2051–2070, with climate change (average increase of 0.7%) playing a negligible role. For RCP4.5, an increase of 16% is predicted, while the highest increase of 19% is observed in RCP8.5. Population growth is responsible for most of the increase.