A new data-driven model for urban water demand forecasting

尽管加拿大的水资源相对丰富，但供水商对管理用水需求很感兴趣

Despite the relative abundance of water in Canada, water suppliers are interested in managing water demand than ever before. In this sense, our partner, Econics, works with local governments, water utilities and municipalities. Efforts in the Canadian urban water (UW) supply sector move towards more integrated and demand side management approaches to control and expand their water supply systems (WSS). It is recognized the need for new tools that can be used to more effectively and sustainably plan and manage UW supply systems. One such tool is state of art and highly accurate, precise and reliable UW demand (UWD) forecasting models. They provide support for water resources and utility managers to adapt to changes in the short-or long-term UWD forecasts. Data-driven models represent the main type of such modeling. During the last two decades, several of such statistical models have been examined for UWD forecasting mainly for short-term. However, data-driven models have not been examined for UWD long-term forecasting, especially under different climate changes scenarios (CCS). The latter should be examined and their impact on UWD should be evaluated. The main goal of the project is to develop data-driven models for long-term UWD forecasting, while considering long-term CCS and their expected impacts on UWD for a given municipality. To date, no studies have examined the performance of ANN models for long-term UWD forecasting under CCS. Despite the good performance of ANN models, they have limitations, particularly with non-stationary data. Several studies have shown promising performance outcomes when combined with Wavelets (W-ANN) as well as the use of ensemble ANNs (ENN) where ENNs are more robust, consistent and reliable models. The main goal of this research project is to develop W-ENN models for the long-term UWD forecasting under different CCS. The new, highly accurate and reliable UWD long-term forecasting models will provide Econics, and in turn their clients with very useful models that will allow the most accurate, precise and reliable UWD long-term forecasting and will consequently help in effectively and sustainably plan and manage UW supply system.