Featured Innovation: Forecasts for Water Along With the Weather

As temperatures rise in summer, so does water demand. During summer 2018, the North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD) experienced increased demands during retrofits of the Wylie Water Treatment Plant.

As temperatures hovered around 100 degrees, NTMWD wanted to be sure they were able to reliably treat and provide for the peak demands of their 1.8 million customers. To address this concern, Freese and Nichols employed a Daily Demand Model to predict future demands for the next week.

The model uses a multilinear regression equation that takes into account temperature, rainfall and other key variables to predict future demand. The model successfully predicted the trend of water use over a seven-day period, providing NTMWD valuable information to make operational decisions during constrained conditions at the water treatment plant. The forecasts enabled NTMWD to efficiently bring the water treatment plant back online without impacting their customers.