Abstract

Water Consumption Fluctuaions in response to heat-waves and Dust-Storms
Track: Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater
Authors: Assaf Alhawas

The marked difference between escalating water demand in the city of Riyadh and shrinking supplies illustrates that progress towards sustainable management falls short of adequacy. Understanding people's behavioral response to meteorological variables will help create a short-term forecasting model of urban water consumption. And will help city management educate people and guide them to a more conservative response to naturally imposed conditions. Aggregate analysis of city daily water consumption vs. daily maximum temperature and the occurrence of dust storms during the period 1/1/2009 to 1/10/2012 are presented in this paper. Also, detailed analysis of daily water meter data for a sample of households in Almorooj neighborhood is presented. Such analysis required the utilization of remotely sensed high resolution images, GIS mapping of the households plus the water distribution net and the building of a geodatabase for household characteristics. significant correlations were observed when weekly and monthly consumptions were considered.