Food Water Energy for Urban Sustainable Environments (FUSE)

Economics and Institutions

Modeling urban water consumption decisions

Households and businesses in our case study cities have to rely on multiple sources of water to meet their daily demands. Piped water supply is subject to scheduled and unscheduled interruptions. Urban water consumers use storage tanks to bridge the gaps. When this option is insufficient, tanker trucks, standpipes, and wells provide alternative supply options. We use economic demand functions to model users’ demand for water under changing socio-economic conditions and policy environments, and to estimate the benefits the different water sources provide to users. In our Amman case study, we rely on 15,811 representative household-level observations from four years and on a tailored survey of 342 commercial establishments to estimate these demand functions (Klassert et al., 2018). A tiered supply curve framework allows us capture the choice between piped and tanker water, as well as the use of in-house storage tanks (see figure; Klassert et al., 2015; Srinivasan et al., 2010). This approach provides new insights into water users’ adaptation to challenging water supply situations and helps us to assess their vulnerability to increasing water scarcity.

Figure: Illustration of the tiered supply curve framework from Klassert et al. (2015) extending the approach described in Srinivasan et al. (2010). For both piped and tanker water, p = price, y = water quantity, D = demand, S = supply, and Ῡ = maximum individual piped water availability given limited supply hours and storage capacity. The benefits derived from water use are represented by the consumer surplus area marked in gray, while the total water expenditure is represented by the area marked in blue.

References

  • Klassert, C., Sigel, K., Klauer, B., and Gawel, E. 2018. Increasing Block Tariffs in an Arid Developing Country: A Discrete/Continuous Choice Model of Residential Water Demand in Jordan. Water 10 (3): 248. doi:10.3390/w10030248
  • Klassert, C., Sigel, K., Gawel, E., and Klauer, B. 2015. Modeling Residential Water Consumption in Amman: The Role of Intermittency, Storage, and Pricing for Piped and Tanker Water. Water 7 (7): 3643-3670. doi:10.3390/w7073643
  • Srinivasan, V., Gorelick, S.M., and Goulder, L. 2010. Sustainable urban water supply in south India: Desalination, efficiency improvement, or rainwater harvesting? Water Resour. Res. 46: W10504. doi:10.1029/2009WR008698.