Abstract:
Pakistan is rapidly becoming a water stressed country, thus affecting people’s wellbeing. Authorities are faced with making drastic water conservation policies towards
achieving effective management of available water resources and efficient water
supply delivery coupled with responsible demand side management. Due to the lack
of modern water metering in Pakistan, water consumption is not being accurately
monitored, due to which we are unable to monitor and manage our water resources
efficiently. Smart meters are very expensive, installation of smart meters in an urban
infrastructure of a country like Pakistan is not possible at this level. To achieve this
goal, we propose a hybrid modeling and simulation framework, consisting of: (i)
Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) paradigm that takes into account the behavior and
characteristics of individuals and (ii) System Dynamics (SD) paradigm that accounts
for water flow dynamics. Our approach provides dual-resolution expressiveness
suitable for replicating real-world urban infrastructure scenarios. The key objective of
the research is to assist authorities to understand and forecast short-term and longterm water consumption through examining varying patterns of water consumption
in different climates and thus improving demand side water usage dynamically
commensurate with water supply availability and to gain insights of the behavior
patterns of water consumption in different areas and improve the performance of
the water supply process through demand side management. Furthermore, we
propose a low cost solution to smart water meter, we propose to develop an IoT kit
that will help in collection of water consumption data at entity level. Once water
starts to flow through some entity the water flow sensors will signal the kit and will
record the quantity as well as the time for which the water was consumed from that
entity. Finally, we will be able to generate the demand of water at household as well
as that of an urban area and will be able to validate our model.
