Using Existing Municipal Water Data to Support Conservation Efforts

There is an urgent need to ensure the sustainability of urban water resources. It is commonly agreed that effective monitoring is a powerful tool to that end, but upgrades to data collection systems may not be feasible for many municipalities because of the significant resources required. The aim of this project was to explore how existing water meter data can be used to support conservation efforts, using the City of Vancouver parks system as a case study. This study used a framework developed in data science to identify how the data management process could be improved. The study showed that the lack of strategic processing and cleaning of the data for conservation purposes was a major barrier, limiting the capacity to analyze data and communicate pertinent information. Further, this study suggests that strategic analysis of readily available water billing data can be an effective way to support conservation efforts.