A Stochastic Model for Representing Drinking Water Demand at Residential Level

In this study, attention is initially focussed on modelling finely sampled (1 min) residential water demand time series. Subsequently, the possibility of simulating the water demand time series relevant to different time intervals and many users is analysed by using an aggregation approach. A cluster Neyman-Scott stochastic process (NSRP) is proposed to represent the residential water demand and a parameterisation procedureis implemented to respect the cyclical behaviour usually observed in any working day. A validation is performed on the basis of the one-minute datacollected on the water distribution system of Castelfranco Emilia located in the province of Modena (I). The elaborations performed show the validity both of the NSRP model and the parameterisation procedure proposedto represent the residential demand with fine time intervals (up to 5–10 min). On the other hand, when a procedure of aggregation is applied to represent the water demand of a high number of users, the results are nolonger satisfactory since only the mean is preserved while the other statistics, and in particular the variance, are underestimated. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003