Use of a Household Survey in the Development of an Agent-Based Model to Support Water Demand Management in Jaipur, India

The growth of urban water demands in many developing countries outpaces the expansion of water infrastructure, and growing populations may meet immediate water needs through private wells and illegal connections. Demand management strategies can avert the depletion of water resources by encouraging conservation and installation of water-efficient technologies. In many developing urban areas, however, significant heterogeneity may exist among water consumers in their sources of water, end use applications, and individual responses to messages about water conservation. Consequently, predicting the performance of demand management strategies using simple demand projections may neglect significant interactions and decision-making among users. An agent-based modeling approach is developed here to simulate the spread of water conservation technologies within a community in response to conservation policies, which target portions of the population using different messaging techniques. Agents represent households, and water use behaviors are coded based on data derived from a household survey of 248 households on water use behaviors and willingness to conserve water. Management strategies are simulated to represent direct messaging from government officials to reduce overall water consumption and indirect messaging from government officials and religious officials. The framework is applied for Jaipur, India, a city with a population of approximately 3.2 million people. The agent-based model is applied to project reduction of overall consumption rates due to the spread of water conservation technology, and results are compared to projected water demands at the current residential water consumption rate.