Financial stress index, Financial institutions, Early warning systems, Financial fragility, Monitoring, E44, G21, C25,

The Conserve Florida Water Clearinghouse has developed Internet‐based software called EZ Guide to assist Florida water utilities in evaluating water use efficiency. This modeling approach estimates single‐family outdoor water use for every parcel using a uniform statewide property appraisers' database to estimate irrigated area for each parcel. Billing data are needed to estimate the irrigation application rates for each parcel, although few utilities have used the available data for this purpose. Analyses using these unique databases for a benchmark utility in Florida provide new insights into the overall impact of single‐family outdoor water use and cost‐effective management options. A key result is that only a small percentage of homes are large irrigators, which makes them candidates for irrigation best management practices. However, this study also shows a dramatic rise in the prevalence of inground sprinkler systems over the past few decades, which has led to increased irrigation application rates.

The commercial, industrial, and institutional (CII) sectors are significant contributors to public water demand. To estimate CII water use, utilities historically have relied on water use coefficients that use the number of employees as the measure of size. However, it is difficult to obtain this information at a resolution fine enough to differentiate among individual water users and adequately evaluate water conservation options. To overcome these challenges, a methodology was developed to estimate CII water use through spatial, physical, and economic property-based information publicly available from the Florida Department of Revenue (FDOR) for each of the 8.8 million parcels in the state.Water use data for 3,172 CII parcels were linked with FDOR data to develop average and peak water use coefficients normalized by heated building area. By estimating water use at the parcel level, the methodology provides baseline water use estimates essential to evaluating water conservation options. C ommercial, industrial, and institutional (CII) users account for a significant portion of the the total water withdrawn and delivered by public or private suppliers to end water users. The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated water use from public supplies across the United States in 1995 as 17% commercial, 12% industrial, and 15% public use and losses (Solley et al, 1998). CII water use comparisons across agencies and water utilities are complicated by dissimilar approaches to classifying customers. For example, the USGS generally groups institutional establishments within commercial water use and defines public water use as water from the public water supply used for such purposes as firefighting, street washing, and municipal parks; water losses are usually dealt with separately from public use. According to a survey of water agency reporting practices for water losses (Beecher, 2002), regulatory agencies in nearly all states have set upper limits on water losses ranging from 7.5 to 25%, with 15% being the most common value. Thus, the USGS estimate of CII water use in 1995 can be expressed as at least 29% of the total water delivered. The USGS did not include commercial water use in its 2005 update of the 1995 national water use assessment (Kenny et al, 2009), but other researchers (Dziegielewski et al, 2000) have estimated that CII water use accounts for approximately 15-25% of municipal water use. On the basis of metered data, the commercial/industrial sector of public water supply systems in the Southwest Florida Water Management District

In contrast to traditional supply augmentation options, demand management options include specifying and/or replacing many small end uses that individually have a minimal effect on overall water use but that collectively can constitute significant aggregate reductions in demand. This article outlines a systematic procedure to quantify savings potential of single-family residential indoor end-use devices of a given utility and then select the optimal blend of retrofits to achieve a specified goal. Three steps are used to quantify savings potential of all end-use devices. First, a utility's current end-use fixture inventory and associated water use is estimated from parcel-level data for each singlefamily residence. Second, customers are clustered into relatively homogeneous water use categories based on the age of the dwelling unit and the number of bathrooms. Third, water savings are calculated directly as the difference between current and proposed use after implementation of a management option for each group. This information is used to develop performance functions that estimate total water savings as a function of the number of fixture retrofits for each group. W ater demand management can be a viable alternative to augmenting a supply system to meet future water needs. Demand management should be compared with traditional supply augmentation methods to decide whether it is a viable option. Methods of analysis are well-established for choosing among supply augmentation options such as well field development, reservoir and pipeline construction, and desalination. Demand management is an emerging alternative in which several case studies have illustrated significant demand reduction from various strategies, including technological improvements, behavioral marketing campaigns, and adjustments of water pricing. The major difference between traditional supply augmentation and demand management is that traditional supply options are capital-intensive with long service lives; as a result, capacity expansion is done in discrete, relatively large, increments. Demand management options include many small changes that reduce water use for individual customers by a few gallons per day but that collectively can bring about significant aggregate reductions in demand if applied to a significant portion of the utility's customers.Advances in database availability, including an associated geographic information system (GIS), make it possible to do a bottom-up evaluation of water demand patterns across the utility and systematically determine the potential savings for all single-family indoor retrofit options within a given utility. An optimal mix of demand management strategies can then be selected by comparing each demand management control with a few large supply augmentation options. Existing

The widespread use of reclaimed water for irrigation of residential landscapes has the potential to encourage much higher use if water is provided in the absence of a commodity charge. Unlike indoor water needs that are relatively consistent regionally, irrigation demand varies extensively. This research examines the demand for irrigation in the absence of a commodity charge using parcel‐level water use data for 510 single‐family residences. When compared with a data set of potable accounts, the application rate was observed to be 65.2 in./year for the reclaimed water customers and 13.2 in./year for the potable water customers—an increase of 493%. Additionally, 95% of the reclaimed water customers applied more water than the net irrigation demand (theoretical plant requirements). By leveraging estimates of irrigation demands from other studies, a method is developed to apply the findings of this study to irrigator customers without a commodity charge throughout Florida.