Characterization of Municipal Water Uses in Urban Areas Across the Contiguous United States

An improved understanding of municipal water demand is essential for transitioning toward sustainable urban water management. This study develops a municipal water demand model by utilizing the Integrated Urban Water Model (IUWM), aimed at estimating and analyzing urban water use patterns across urban areas rather than conventional county‐level units within the contiguous United States (CONUS) for the period 2005–2017. The objectives of this study are to regionalize model parameters for urban regions, quantify these parameters and associated predictive uncertainties, and explore the intensity of municipal water use in various ecohydrological regions across the CONUS. Findings suggest that by analyzing total water use and the Commercial, Industrial, and Institutional to Residential (CII/Res) water use ratio, along with socio‐ecohydrological factors, cities can be grouped into four distinct clusters: arid cities with high total and outdoor use; western and arid‐region cities; eastern cities in continental and temperate climates; and major urban centers with high CII/Res ratios. The results indicate that water use intensity and predictive uncertainty differ across regions and urban clusters, influenced by both climatic and demographic factors. While arid and southern cities experience the highest levels of uncertainty, densely populated areas tend to have more predictable water use patterns. Conversely, smaller cities are marked by greater variation and less predictable municipal water use estimates. The use of regionalized model parameters improves the assessment of municipal water use at finer spatial scales, enabling more effective decision‐making by water managers and contributing to more resilient and sustainable water management.