Predicting future water demand in Austria due to climate change and demographic development
- Graz University of Technology, Institute of Urban Water Management and Landscape Water Engineering, Austria (anika.stelzl@tugraz.at)
Due to the climate change, it is expected that there will be longer dry and hot episodes in the future in Central Europe. As a result, temporary water shortages are to be expected in certain parts of Austria. Due to these changes, it is assumed that the future water demand will increase, caused by a change in consumption behavior and the increase of garden irrigations. Furthermore, an increasing population is expected, which may also lead to a shortage, especially in small supply areas.
For water supply companies it is especially important to know the future change in water demand in order to be able to adapt to these changes. Therefore, a water demand forecasting model is derived in this study. In a first step, this study analyses the change in water demand in recent years and the relationship between water demand and climate indices. Furthermore, the change of the future water demand depending on the different climate change scenarios (RCP 2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) is estimated. For this purpose, different modeling approaches (e.g. multiple linear regression, random forest,…) were tested and a suitable approach is selected. The water demand forecasting model is trained and tested with water demand and weather data reaching back several years. To estimate the future change in water demand, the model is applied to the climate projections and the change between the selected reference period and the two future periods is calculated. The change in demographic development is considered in the last step.
So far, we found that for the selected study site peak water demand will increase by an average between 1.5% and 5.5%, depending on the different climate change scenario for the period 2051-2070 compared with the reference period (2001-2020). It was also determined that demographic development is responsible for the majority of the increase in water demand.
Acknowledgements: The presented research is funded by the Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management of the Republic of Austria
How to cite: Stelzl, A. and Fuchs-Hanusch, D.: Predicting future water demand in Austria due to climate change and demographic development, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-14124, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-14124, 2023.
