Impact of emerging water scenarios on performance of urban water networks
type: CreativeWork
description: Concerns over the impacts of urban growth have prompted the development and adoption of water-demand management strategies. Water and energy savings from increasingly efficient technologies, diversified water sources, and water savings policies are typically quantified from an individual demand-side basis, but network-wide potential is not well studied. This paper studies the effects of residential demand profiles on the performance of urban water networks, in response to emerging demand management strategies. To assess the performance of three demand scenarios: 1) base, 2) conservation, and 3) load-shifting, hydraulic simulations were conducted. Four metrics of network performance are suggested to evaluate responses to scenarios: water loss, water age, energy loss, and peak flow. The results revealed network performance for energy and flow metrics improved under both conservation and load-shifting scenarios. However, these scenarios had either a negative or an insignificant impact on water age and losses throughout the network. The results indicate potential savings from these demand profiles cannot be fully realized without adjustments in network operation, and may come at a cost in terms of water quality. This works suggests an initial tool for evaluating network-wide effects of different demand management strategies.
abstract: Concerns over the impacts of urban growth have prompted the development and adoption of water-demand management strategies. Water and energy savings from increasingly efficient technologies, diversified water sources, and water savings policies are typically quantified from an individual demand-side basis, but network-wide potential is not well studied. This paper studies the effects of residential demand profiles on the performance of urban water networks, in response to emerging demand management strategies. To assess the performance of three demand scenarios: 1) base, 2) conservation, and 3) load-shifting, hydraulic simulations were conducted. Four metrics of network performance are suggested to evaluate responses to scenarios: water loss, water age, energy loss, and peak flow. The results revealed network performance for energy and flow metrics improved under both conservation and load-shifting scenarios. However, these scenarios had either a negative or an insignificant impact on water age and losses throughout the network. The results indicate potential savings from these demand profiles cannot be fully realized without adjustments in network operation, and may come at a cost in terms of water quality. This works suggests an initial tool for evaluating network-wide effects of different demand management strategies.
author: Zhuang, Janice Gu
language: en
keywords: Urban water network, Water demand management, Emerging water scenarios, Water network-wide potential, Residential water demand profiles
date published: 2018-05-04
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:19:11Z
provider: Texas Digital Library
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Texas Digital Library

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/2152/68047

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2152/68047