Abstract. The direct measurement of the micro-components of water consumption (i.e., consumption by each residential activity, such as toilet-, laundry-, bath-, and kitchen-use), both in the dry season and in the rainy season, was conducted in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was expected that rainfall differences between the dry and rainy season would influence awareness for water resources so that water consumption in the dry season would be smaller than that in the rainy season. In addition, it was examined whether the differences in water resources such as public waterworks or non-public waterworks (i.e., community waterworks, mountainous water and groundwater), affected the amount of water use. A small-sized accumulative water meter was developed for measurement. This survey provides important information for water demand estimations and water supply planning in middle-developed countries where water consumption is expected to increase in future.
In the area where household water use exceeds the capacity of the public water supply, rainwater is considered as one of the alternative water resources. Many researchers studied rainwater potential to cover the specific value of water demand in households having the average catchment area, so that the estimated potential expresses that of the average population. In this research, the possibility of rainwater use for toilets was investigated more realistically using the probability distributions of water demand and catchment area, and precipitation in case of Hanoi, Vietnam. Monte Carlo simulations were conducted throughout this simulation and the distribution of the possibility of rainwater use was estimated. The effect of household size and seasonal variations on the potential of rainwater utilization was also assessed. These results showed that our new approach exhibited that approximately 60% of the households failed to achieve the potential that was estimated using the conventional approach. Therefore, our new approach should be useful to understand the manner in which the potential of rainwater utilization differs in a given area, and it could be applied to other areas for consideration on the rainwater use potential and the suitable tank size when the distributions of variables and precipitation are clear.
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