Decision-support system for domestic water demand forecasting and management

A decision support system (DFMS) for forecasting domestic water demand including demand management was developed as part of a highly integrated decision-support system for river-basin management. The system provides water resources planners with the facilities for estimating future water demand for domestic use for any demand region and time period, having regard, to the possibility of introducing demand management measures. The system has the capability of predicting domestic-water demand by various methods according to data availability. It can compute conservation effectiveness due to the implementation of various demand-management measures, forecasting the number of customers for different consumption units (person, household and water connection) and facilitating the development of demand-scenarios for evaluating various options. In general, the system comprises of the following components: (1) geographic information system, (2) database management system, (3) expert system, (4) multi-decision component, (5) prediction models, (6) user-interface, (7) hypertext files. The system has been tested and demonstrated using the data of Swindon demand zone of Thames Water Utility.