Urban Scenario components

Demand and End-use Simulation

Urban Developer represents urban demand by simulating individual end-uses at the household level. The end-use categories included in Urban Developer are:

  • outdoor/variable;
  • shower;
  • washing machine;
  • toilets and
  • indoor hand taps and dishwashers

These five end-uses typically comprise 93-98 percent of household water use (Thyer et al., 2008). End-uses such as baths and leaks are not modelled explicitly, but can be lumped with the outdoor/variable end-use. Separating demand into its individual users provides the user with the flexibility to use different supply sources for each of the types of end-use.

The urban demand is represented by a Water Use node (Figure 1). Urban Developer offers two methods for simulating the water use at a water use node, either:

  • an Average daily model, or
  • a Behavioural model, with three possible configurations:
    1. Fixed appliances and occupancy specified for each water use node in the model
    2. Randomly sampled values for appliances and occupancy across the water use nodes in the model
    3. Average appliance demand (which can be used in conjunction with fixed or sampled appliances and occupancy).
Figure 1 Urban scenario water use nodes

Contents

References

Thyer, M. A., Duncan, H., Coombes, P., Kuczera, G., & Micevski, T. (2009). A probabilistic behavioural approach for the dynamic modelling of indoor household water use. In H2009: 32nd Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium: Adapting to Change, 30 November - 3 December 2009, Newcastle, Australia (p. 1059).

Acknowledgements

This material has been adapted from:

eWater Cooperative Research Centre (2011) Urban Developer User Guide: Urban Developer v1.0.0, eWater Cooperative Research Centre, Canberra, 29 June 2011. ISBN 978-1-921543-40-1