Advanced Analytics and Trend Analysis of Water Consumption and Supply in the City of Regina

Overview

Client: City of Regina

Location: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Project: Assessment of Historical Water Use Trends and Long-Term Forecast of Water Demand in Regina (Based on Nine Years of Automated Meter Reading and Water Supply Data)

IDS was commissioned by the City of Regina to analyze water trends in the City over the past nine years using meter reading data collected by the City’s drive-by automated meter reading (AMR) system as well as storage, pumping, and treatment data collected by the City’s SCADA system. This historical information is invaluable in understanding the impact of such parameters as seasonality, population growth, conservation measures, and water rates on the patterns of water consumption and non-revenue water.

Challenge

The City of Regina’s water system provides water for residential, commercial, and industrial customers as well as water for irrigation, summer service, and fire protection. The system serves a population of approximately 207,000. Over the past decade, the City of Regina has invested heavily to implement state-of-the-art automated meter reading (AMR) and SCADA technologies, which enabled the collection of massive amounts of water consumption and supply data. Processing and analyzing this data could provide wealth of information on the intrinsic behavior of the system and to reliably forecast future water demand. This information will be invaluable to support decisions on system operations, capacity planning, and demand management. However, this analysis would require the use of specialized analytics algorithms and software tools that are not readily available in the market.

Solution

To undertake this project, IDS has developed a unique data analytics solution to implement specialized algorithms to process and analyze the massive amount of Regina’s water data over nine years study period (2005-2013). The solution was designed to provide detailed analysis of water consumption data across various service sectors based on AMR data, as well as water storage, supply, and treatment data. The solution also supported analysis of trends and relationships between water use, population change, non-revenue water, system capacity, per capita use, and climate conditions.

The solution was used to analyze daily, weekly, monthly, annual, and multi-year water consumption based on AMR data and to assess historical trends of water consumption for various service classes (residential, multi-residential, commercial, irrigation, and summer services). The solution was also used to analyze water production and storage data and trends of reservoirs volume change and supply from the treatment plant. Trends of average and peak daily demand, and average per capita demand were also analyzed. Weather data during the study period were also analyzed to examine possible correlation with water consumption trends. The solution was also used to analyze trends in non-revenue water over the study period and evaluate correlation with demand levels and time of the year. The analysis results will provide valuable insights into the intrinsic behavior of the system and forecasting of future water demand. The results will also help define feasible service level targets and support decisions on system operations, capacity planning, and demand management.

Optimal Renewal Planning of City of Regina’s Water Distribution Network

Project Description

Client:   City of Regina
Location:   Regina, Saskatchewan

IDS is working with the City of Regina to develop an optimized risk-based 20-year renewal plan of the City’s drinking water distribution network. IDS is using its WaterNet Optimizer software to generate a network-level optimal renewal plans under a wide range of scenarios, and to analyze the trade-offs among these scenarios to provide evidence-based recommendations on water main replacement and rehabilitation projects over the next 20 years.

Challenge

The City of Regina manages an inventory of over 1,000 km of water mains. The City, like other cities and water utilities, is facing significant challenges due to ageing infrastructure, unprecedented population growth, increasing demand, high customer expectations for levels of service, mounting renewal costs, and more stringent regulatory requirements. The City has been undertaking several initiatives to implement asset management best-practices. This project complements City’s efforts by developing an optimized 20-year risk-based renewal plan that explicitly takes into consideration the impact of renewal decisions on service levels and assesses financial requirements for meeting defined/desired levels of service.

Solution

This project involves the application of WaterNet Optimizer® to develop 20-year optimal renewal plan for small diameter (150-400 mm) asbestos cement and PVC water mains in the City’s network, which constitute approximately 85% of the total network. WaterNet Optimizer® is used to build multi-variate inductive deterioration models to predict probability of water main breaks based on historical break record data, and to define a quantitative risk-based prioritization scheme to rank pipes based on both the probability and consequence of breaks.

A range of renewal planning scenarios are investigated to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of various budget profiles on network-wide risk levels and to evaluate budget requirements to achieve desired risk targets. Each scenario is defined by a set of parameters including budget profile, varying annual levels of risk levels, budget splitting among renewal methods, and average annual inflation rate. For each scenario, WaterNet Optimizer® generates optimal annual project lists that define which pipe segment to rehabilitate or replace and which rehabilitation or replacement method to use, subject to defined constraints on condition, risk, and budget. WaterNet Optimizer® is also used to analyze trade-offs between funding levels and system-wide risk levels based on the results obtained from various scenarios.