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Urban Water User Node

Owned by Meryl McKerrow
Last updated: 13 Aug 2020 by Juanita Moolman
3 min read

The Source Water User node represents a point in the node-link network where demand is modelled. It is responsible for generating orders, managing water extractions, and providing drainage return flows. For general information on creating and configuring Water User nodes, refer to the Source User Guide.

The Water User node contains several different types of demand models for representing different types of demand, such as irrigation water use. When the Urban Developer Plugin is installed an additional demand model is available, called the Urban Behavioural Demand. A Water User node using the Urban Behavioural Demand model is referred to as an Urban Water User node.

Configuring an Urban Water User Node

Adding the Urban Behavioural Demand Model

In the Water User node Feature Editor, right-click Demand Models and select the Urban Behavioural Demand model.

Contents

Adding Configurations

One or more "Configurations" are created for the Urban Behavioural Demand model to represent the water use by different household types (e.g. apartments, detached house with rainwater tank, etc). For each configuration, the user:

  1. specifies the number of dwellings represented
  2. connects to the urban combination database for that dwelling type
  3. specifies the distributions of appliances and occupancy in those dwellings

Right Click the Urban Behavioural Demand model and select Add Configuration.

Configure the number of dwellings the Urban Water User is to represent, the Urban Scenario and the urban combination database to use for calculating household demands. If the Urban Combination simulation has not been pre-run appropriately a warning will appear. In this example, the Behavioural Demand node will take 100% of the urban demand (specified by the selected recorders) to contribute to the demand for this Water User. 

Appliance & Occupancy Distributions

The Urban Behavioural Demand model simulates the distribution of occupancy and appliances for each configuration in a similar manner to the Sampled Appliances & Occupancy configuration in the Urban Scenario type. 

The Urban Demand Model will take the average demand generated from the supplied urban combination database. This is best explained with an example:

If there are three star-ratings for showers included in our urban combination database run, the demands for each are imported into the Source Scenario and are available in the Urban Behavioural Demand model configurations. The Urban Behavioural Demand model is configured to represent 4 dwellings and the distributions of shower rating types selected for the configuration are: one star: 50%, two stars: 25%, and three-star: 25%. The Urban Behavioural Demand model would call the demand results for one star showers twice (for two dwellings), two stars once and three star once, summing all of them together to create a demand for all four houses. 

To model changes in end-use efficiency over time, a Time Based Distribution can be applied for Occupancy and for each end-use. These allow the distribution to be changed on a given date. In the example below, the distribution of Shower head ratings changes on 1 April 2019, 1 July 2019 and 30 September 2019.

Although small, the effect of changing Shower head efficiency over time can be seen: