A water resources management strategy for small water districts

A water resources management strategy for small water districts — a case study of the South East Kelowna irrigation district Michael Cresswell, Gholamreza Naser Okanagan School of Engineering, University of British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC. V1V 1V7, Canada. Corresponding author: Gholamreza Naser (e-mail: bahman.naser@ubc.ca). Published on the web 25 March 2013. ________________________________________ Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 2013, 40(6): 499-507, 10.1139/cjce-2012-0398 Abstract The availability of fresh drinking water sources is invariably becoming an important issue everywhere. This highlights the quest for a more efficient operation of the available water resources especially in arid or semi-arid regions with limited amount of water available. This research was intended to help the authorities in small water districts better manage their available water resources. The research has three parts. In the first part, a demand forecasting model was created to predict the amount of water requested by consumers. The second part developed hydraulic and water quality models to evaluate the flow characteristics in a water supply system. In the third part, these models were applied, calibrated and verified with field data for the South East Kelowna Irrigation District (Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada). The water demand forecasting model had values of 81% and 78% for the coefficient of determination for the calibrated and validated models, respectively. The corresponding value was 98% for the hydraulic model. The high values for the coefficient of determination indicated great success for the proposed models. Keywords: water resources management, water supply system, demand forecasting, hydraulic modelling, water quality modelling ________________________________________