Urban Water Management: Traditional and Non-Traditional Management Methods and the Effects of Advanced Meters

Urban water supplies have traditionally been managed through demand side management practices such as pricing, education, legislation, technology, maintenance, and more. These practices having varying effectiveness and should be combined for greater impact. Other factors that influence consumption, such as weather patterns, attitudes toward conservation, and socio-economic factors, determine how effective demand management is. A shift in management paradigms involving treating the various sources of urban water, drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater, as a single system and using water of a quality level that matches its use is occurring to help increase the amount of water that can be conserved through management. Another change in management practices is the implementation of advanced meters which have many benefits, including reduced water consumption and detection of water theft and leaks. The use of such Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is implemented in Arlington, Texas where having access to hourly consumption data has on the water usage of residents was observed to have slight reduction effects on the amount of water consumed by online data portal Users. These reductions varied depending on whether the consumption data was compared to the previous year or to the historical averages. This likely was influenced by vast differences in precipitation during these years. The demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the residents was examined along with the change in consumption data over of the residents who use the portal as compared with the change in consumption of those who do not. It was found that the in characteristics of the residents who used the portal were not largely different than from those that did not use the portal