Preparing municipal water system planning for a changing climate: Integrating climate‐sensitive demand estimates

Seasonality and a changing climate exert strong influences on supply and demand in the western United States, challenging municipal water system (MWS) management. Although supply and demand exhibit characteristics of nonstationarity, the commonly used econometric‐based models to estimate demands dis...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the American Water Resources Association 2024-02, Vol.60 (1), p.211-225
Main Authors: Johnson, Ryan C., Burian, Steven J., Halgren, James, Irons, Trevor, Baur, Emily, Aziz, Danyal, Hassan, Daniyal, Li, Jiada, Kirkham, Tracie, Stewart, Jessie, Briefer, Laura
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Climate change
climate resilience
Climate variability
Environmental impact
Error correction
Error reduction
Estimates
Imported water
Municipal water
Seasonal variations
Seasonality
Sensitivity
Supply & demand
Vulnerability
water demand projections
Water resources
water system management
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Summary:Seasonality and a changing climate exert strong influences on supply and demand in the western United States, challenging municipal water system (MWS) management. Although supply and demand exhibit characteristics of nonstationarity, the commonly used econometric‐based models to estimate demands discount the influences of climate variability and trends in seasonal MWS vulnerability assessments. Given the projected impacts of climate change on water resources, we use the documented performance of a real‐world MWS with a calibrated systems model to investigate how demands modeled with and without the influences of climate impact system vulnerability indicators—determined by the exceedance of historical daily mean imported water—for MWS planning guidance. Neglecting climatic influences on MWS demands, the model overestimates the volume of imported water by up to 50% and misclassifies vulnerabilities during supply‐limiting conditions. The climate‐sensitive demand estimates reduced model error (i.e.,
ISSN:1093-474X
1752-1688
DOI:10.1111/1752-1688.13165