2nd UF Water Institute Symposium Abstract

   
Submitter's Name Miguel Morales
Session Name Poster Session: Optimal Use of Integrated Water Supplies 1
Category Optimal use of integrated water supplies
Poster Number 419
 
Author(s) Miguel Morales,  University of Florida, Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences
  James Heaney,  University of Florida, Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences
   
  Estimating Nonresidential Water Use within a Water Audit
   
  This poster presents a new methodology to estimate nonresidential (NR) water use based on evaluation of parcel level customer attribute and water use billing databases. The Florida Department of Revenue (FDOR) and County Property Appraisers (CPA) databases provide the heated building area and customer classifications for every NR parcel in the State of Florida. Linking this parcel level attribute data with parcel level water use billing data provides a major improvement in our ability to estimate NR use. Existing methods typically use the number of employees as the best single indicator of the “size” of the activity. Employee data is available periodically through the U.S. Census or private surveys. Census data is not available at the parcel level and survey data are expensive to collect. Evaluation of alternative measures of size that are contained in the FDOR/CPA databases and customer billing data indicate that heated area is the best single measure of size to use across the 57 NR two-digit FDOR land use categories. Only a few Florida water utilities are known to have merged FDOR/CPA databases to their customer billing database. The base case for this analysis is Hillsborough County Water Utility that provides a relatively large sample of 1,857 NR parcels of which 65% are commercial, 8% are industrial, and 27% are institutional. Monthly water use data for four years from 2003 to 2006 were analyzed to estimate average and peak water use coefficients expressed in gallons per month per square foot of heated area for each of the FDOR NR land use categories. Knowing these water use coefficients and the total heated area for each FDOR category, it is simple for any utility estimate the total water use for each FDOR sector, and through the use of a calibrated model, carry out a water audit.