DEMAND FORECAST A TOOL FOR EFFICIENT WATER SUPPLY: A CASE STUDY OF ACHARA RESIDENTIAL LAYOUT ENUGU, ENUGU STATE NIGERIA

Unigwe Ozioma Chigozirim, Essien Etido Edet

Abstract: Portable water is essential to life, required by humans, animals and plants regularly for healthy living and development, its distribution makes it readily available to the populace. Inefficiency in billing, distribution and management of water distribution facilities are common problems facing water distribution agencies responsible for distributing this commodity. Irregularity in portable water availability in Achara Residential Layout of Enugu state, have resulted to reduced standard of living, which is a consequence of supplying less than demand in the area. There is need to solve this problem in order to maintain a healthy standard of living in the area. This study aimed at enabling the water distribution and supply agency improve on demand by calculating the amount of water required by each individual averagely per day. This was performed by forecasting future water demand, which is to estimate the current per-capita water consumption, usually measured as gallons per-capita per day (gpcd). To execute this study, a number of dataset were used such as the population figures and population projection parameters were obtained from National Population Commission, the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines General Comment No 15, paragraph 12(a) sub-commission guideline section 4 was adopted for this study. The Average Daily Demand (ADD), Average Monthly Demand (AMD) and Average Yearly Demand (AYD) for the different years were calculated for. The parameters obtained were presented graphically using Time Series Analysis Software called MINITAB. It was deduced that population is directly proportional to demand for portable water, thus there is need for frequent study of population growth in the area for efficient supply and service delivery.

Keywords: Water, Gallons Per-capita per day, Distribution, Forecast, Demand, Supply, population

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2018.0702011