Simulation Modeling and Analysis of Household Water Consumption in Pakistan using Hybrid approach
Executive Summary
Pakistan is rapidly becoming a water stressed country, thus affecting people’s well-being. Authorities are faced with making drastic water conservation policies toward achieving effective management of available water resources and efficient water supply delivery coupled with responsible demand side management. Due to the lack of modern water metering in Pakistan, water consumption is not being accurately monitored. To achieve this goal, we propose a hybrid modeling and simulation framework, consisting of: (i) Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) paradigm that takes into account the behavior and characteristics of individuals and (ii) System Dynamics(SD) paradigm that accounts for water flow dynamics. Our approach provides dual-resolution expressiveness suitable for replicating real-world urban infrastructure scenarios. The key objective of the research is to assist authorities to understand and forecast short-term and long-term water consumption through examining varying patterns of water consumption in different climates and thus improving demand side water usage dynamically subject to water supply availability
Objectives
Background
The objective of the research is to develop a framework for the authorities to forecast short-term and long-term water consumption demand, gain insights of the behavior patterns of water consumption in different areas and improve the performance of the water supply process through demand side management and plan effective water governance.
A Simulation framework consisting of a dashboard will be provided to the regulatory authorities after the successful completion of the research, this dashboard will help the regulatory authorities in proper planning and effective management of water resources, and in overcoming water scarcity, strengthening water governance and improving water management.
Water supply and management is becoming a major issue due to climate change, depletion of natural resources and rapid urbanization. It is crucial for the water regulatory authorities to be able to forecast the future demand and propose a resilient and sustainable infrastructure for effective water management. In most parts of the urban regions of Pakistan, there are no proper metering of water and regulatory authorities have no data on water consumption and required water supply. Installing Smart water meters requires significant funding and time commitment. It is therefore an urgent need to forecast the exact household water demand, in order to best manage available water resources. This requires system analysis for combined demand and supply. Many existing approaches propose the analysis of water resources planning and management through modeling and simulation.
Methodology
Our proposed framework consists of four modules:
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Agent Based Modeling (ABM)
Agent Based module consists of a number of Agents: (i) Persons, (ii) Households and (iii) Neighborhoods. The water consumption behavior of an individual, in a typical urban house at hourly (or lower) resolution is modeled using state chart. Water consumption activities follow some stochastic patterns including probabilities of occurrence, time of occurrence and average duration of these activities. We also model different types of persons: infant, child, teen, adult and elder since the consumption behavior vary among these types. We do not distinguish the gender. We also include factors of person’s availability in the house during 24 hours.
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System Dynamics Modeling (SD)
We use System Dynamics approach to model the House components, which consists of stocks and flows. Water reservoirs are modeled as stocks and consumption of water in a house is modeled by using flows. Figure 2 shows aggregate of water consumption in a house. A typical house will have a random number of individuals (person agents) and thus will have a demand profile different from each other. A neighborhood (an array of houses) will have an aggregate demand over time. There are different household water consuming entities in a house and the nature of water consumption in different household entities vary dynamically. Since the house component aggregates multiple individuals in a house, according to the random occupancy, the flows can handle parallel water consumption activities.
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​Internet of Things (IoT) Kit Development
In order to validate our simulation model, we will build an
IoTs water consumption monitoring kit for the collection of data.
Although we have such devices available in the market that can
monitor the hourly utilization of water, but the gadgets that are
available in market are either too expensive or not feasible for
the study. IoTs will be deployed in each and every household
water utilizing entity. The data obtained by these IoTs will consist
of the water consumption and probability of water utilization in
an hour of the day. This data will act as a driving force for water
consumption in a house.
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​Visualizations and Analysis Module
Water regulatory authorities such as Capital Development Authority (CDA) may utilize the visualization dashboard. It provides visualizations of the daily, weekly, monthly or yearly water consumption profiles of the specified area and will help in monitoring and management planning of water resources. This module allows the users to initialize the simulation with a given number of houses and the minimum, maximum population of each house.
Model Development
We used Anylogic Simulation software for development of our proposed framework. Anylogic agent based library that primarily deals with microscale behavioral modelling is used to model behavioral water consumption in a typical household. Activity of a person in a house are controlled with a state chart and is used to trigger activity.
State chart of a Person
We used System Dynamics Modelling to model complex system such as dynamic flow of water. Water reservoirs are modeled as stocks and consumption of water in a house is modeled as flows.
Stock and Flow diagram of water consuming entities in a typical house
Results and Analysis
We ran a simulation of 10 runs for one household of 10 persons (with different types) over a period of 24 hours to visualize the pattern of consumption of different household water consuming entities. Once the utilization pattern was recognized we ran simulation of 10 runs each for period of 1 month, and 1 year respectively.
Hourly Water Consumption of a household of 1 day
[X-axis = Hours, Y-axis = Gallons]
Average daily Water Consumption of 10 houses (Islamabad, Pakistan) for a period of 30 days
Average Monthly Water Consumption of 10 houses of 1 year (Islamabad, Pakistan)
Conclusions and Recommendations
Conclusions:
We proposed a hybrid, agent-based and system dynamics simulation and analysis framework to analyze and forecast household water demand. Proposed framework is composed of four modules. (i) Agent Based module which is used to replicate a person’s behavior and characteristics (ii) System Dynamics module which allows the modeler to replicate complex and dynamic behavior of water flow from a specific household water consuming entity (iii) Internet Of Things (IoT) kit will be developed to monitor water consumption in a typical household and will help in generating the demand profile of a typical household and will help in generating the demand profile of a typical house and an urban infrastructure. (iv) Visualization and Analytics module which allows the modeler to analyze and forecast demand and supply of water in an urban infrastructure.
Impacts:
Our proposed framework will help in forecasting household water demand and will help regulatory authorities in effective water supply and management and will also help in fulfilling United Nations Sustainable development Goals of Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Project Funding: 2.9 Million
Project Starting Date: June 2018
Collaborators: National University of Science and Technology(NUST),Islamabad, Pakistan
Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan
Arizona State University, Tempe, USA
Related Industry: Capital Development Authority (CDA)