Long-Term Water Demand Forecasting

This chapter reviews existing long term water demand forecasting methodologies. Based on an extensive literature review, it shows that the domain has benefited from contributions by economists, engineers and system modelers, producing a wide range of tools, many of which have been tested and adopted by practitioners. It illustrates, via three detailed case studies in the USA, the UK and Australia, how different tools can be used depending on the regulatory context, the water scarcity level, the geographic scale at which they are deployed and the technical background of water utilities and their consultants. The chapter reviews how practitioners address three main challenges, namely the integration of land use planning with demand forecasting; accounting for climate change; and dealing with forecast uncertainty. It concludes with a discussion of research perspectives in that domain.