Impact of COVID-19 emergency on residential water end-use consumption measured with a high-resolution IoT system

Abstract

In the era of Smart Cities, in which the paradigms of smart water and smart grid are keywords of technological progress, advancements in metering systems allow for water consumption data collection at the end-use level, which is necessary to profile users' behaviors and to promote sustainable use of water resources. In this paper, a real case study of residential water end-use consumption monitoring shows how data collected at a high-resolution rate allow for the evaluation of consumption profiles. The analysis was carried out by calculating consumption statistics, hourly consumption patterns, daily use frequency, and weekly use frequency. Then, the comparison of two consumption profiles, computed before and after the COVID-19 lockdown, allows us to understand how a change in social and economic factors can affect users' behavior. Finally, new perspectives for water demand modeling and management, based on data with high temporal frequency, are presented. HIGHLIGHTS Real water consumption data gathered at the fixture level contribute to understand users’ behaviors and identify their impact on demand peak.; Statistical evaluations used to analyze data sampled with a high temporal frequency show how disaggregated data facilitate the identification of water consumption patterns.; The COVID-19 pandemic was used to explore how water end-use data allow for understanding changes of user's behavior.; Data collected at the end-use level are possibly eligible as numerical benchmarks to investigate disaggregation algorithms.;

Keywords

• smart meters
• user behaviors
• user profiling
• water end-use consumption
• water management