EVALUATION OF MUNICIPAL WATER DEMAND AND RELATED PARAMETERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa is a water scarce country that constantly strives to apply its available water resources in the most efficient and equitable manner. Different users vis-à-vis industry, domestic, agriculture and the environment, vie for the available resources and have to be awarded an equitable and adequate share to ensure sustainability in the long term. Proper water demand management in South Africa is thus of critical importance. Researchers, municipal engineers and engineering consultants require good and reliable data and design guidelines on water demand patterns and factors influencing water demand to achieve this aim. The most commonly used South African guideline for water demand estimation for municipal services design first published in 1983(2), is currently published in the document titled “Guidelines for human settlement planning and design ” (1) commonly known as the “Red Book”. The water demand guideline provides upper and lower limits for consumer demands per stand (erf) size. In this paper, the authors analyse measured water demand data of more than a million stands (domestic and non-domestic) contained in the treasur