Innovative water and energy demand management practices in the public water supply sectors

Water and energy resources share some fundamentally similar characteristics. The quantity of water on the planet has changed little over time, and the first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So why is the management of these resources worthy of further investigation? The answer lies in that though the overall quantity of these resources is not of concern, both water and energy resources are highly constrained in terms of their quality and local availability. Higher quality and more readily available segments of these resources are exploited first, leaving only lower quality alternatives, which require greater amounts of energy to extract and/or treat. Water and energy resources are also not uniformly distributed across the planet, leading to local scarcity. Thus, given the real limitations of these resources it is advantageous to our society to ensure that they are properly managed.;To provide greater insight into the management of water and energy resources, this dissertation presents data-driven methodologies by which to evaluate demand management practices within the public water supply sectors. The methodologies largely focus on, but are not limited to, the commercial, industrial, institutional (CII) sectors of water use. Though the CII sectors are a significant component of public water demand, little research has been conducted on how these sectors use water. A data-driven methodology is presented to estimate CII water use. Additionally, a parcel-level approach is presented to estimate the inventory and demands of water end-use devices within the residential and CII sectors. This is followed by the incorporation of costs and savings, including energy savings associated with reductions in hot water demand, into an optimization model by which water demand management practices are evaluated based on cost effectiveness. The use of business data to allow for standardized nationwide classification of CII customers, and number of employees and sales as additional drivers of water use is also presented. Finally, benchmarking systems to measure the relative efficiency of water use customers are explored to assist in determining customers to target for demand management practices.