Modeling the Effects of Conservation, Demographics, Price, and Climate on Urban Water Demand in Los Angeles, California

With a service area population exceeding four million people and with close to 90 % of the water supply being imported from sources outside the city, the Los Angeles water system is subject to multiple stressors, including climate change and population growth. The influence of various factors on water demand in Los Angeles was evaluated through development and application of multiple linear regression models for residential, commercial, industrial, and governmental water demand categories from 1970 to 2014 in the service area of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Performance of the models in describing historical water demand was compared using the coefficient of determination, mean average percent error, and normalized root mean square error. Overall, the results of the linear regression models demonstrated that each water demand category is affected by different parameters. However, price and population were found to have the most significant impact on all categories. The seasonality of residential water demand was well described with the model based on monthly data, with precipitation and temperature being highly significant factors. Fitting of the residential data furthermore revealed that price and conservation have significantly counteracted the impact of population growth on water demand.