Paradigm Shift of Water Demand Forecasting Techniques

Abstract

‘Water’ is an essential element for existence of life and biodiversity. As population and urbanization have been increasing, demand and consumption have increased. Imbalance in water cycle equilibrium emerges many issues, i.e., drought, diseases, flood, etc. These effects hit socially, economically, ecologically, environmentally, technologically and politically also. Limitations of water resources push us to do optimal utilization of it. Water scarcity now becomes a global problem. Interdisciplinary nature of water allows all researchers to contribute bit by bit as per their area, i.e., water resource, water quality, water supply and distribution, water network, technical Updatation, etc. In this paper, we have reviewed demand forecasting techniques. Problem and challenges of water management have been identified. Role of forecasting, impactful parameters, evolution of water demand techniques with respect to time duration (short, long, medium) and conventional (e.g., linear regression, moving avg. mean square, etc.) to modern soft techniques (e.g., machine learning, ANN, support vector machine, genetic algorithm, etc.) have been discussed.