Identification, Prediction, and Explanation of Outdoor Residential Water Consumption Using Smart Meter Data:

Outdoor end-uses of water such as irrigation and filling pools contribute significantly to peak residential consumption. Managing peak consumption in summer is important for reducing infrastructure strain and avoiding potential upgrade costs. We show that outdoor water consumption can be robustly identified from hourly measurement of total water consumption by identifying an upper limit for plausible indoor consumption in a single hour. We also develop regression tree-based models for predicting next-hour water consumption, however the predictability of this consumption is limited. In contrast to previous work, there is little correlation between outdoor consumption and demographic factors such as income. Outdoor consumption shows a large amount of individual variability, with 8.6% of households accounting for 50% of the total outdoor usage.