South East Queensland Regional Water Supply Strategy

The Challenge:
As part of a broader water supply planning process, lead development of a 50-year water demand management strategy for the South East Queensland of Australia, a region of 2.8 million people with severe water shortages and rapid population growth.

 

The Project:
Prior to creating Econnics, Director Kirk Stinchcombe was the project coordinator for the “SEQ Integrated Urban Water Management and Accounting Task Force”.  This project involved modelling past and present water demand for an entire region using actual metered data from 18 different water suppliers.  Working with a major engineering firm, data had to be warehoused, cleansed, verified and climate corrected so that underlying demand trends could be uncovered.  We produced baseline demand curves for the total South East Queensland community, as well as sector-based curves for the residential, commercial and industrial segments. 

 

Next, we forecasted both “managed” and “unmanaged” demand scenarios out to a 50-year horizon.  This involved examining and modelling the potential of the entire range of conservation options: home retrofitting, greywater reuse, rainwater harvesting, dual reticulation, pricing, pressure and leakage control, watering restrictions, building code changes and much more. 

 

The Result:
We successfully completed one of the largest water use accounting and forecasting investigations ever undertaken in the world.  The results are documented in the draft SEQ Water Demand Management Strategy and the Integrated Urban Water Management Investigation reports.  This work has been a critical input into both emergency drought management in Queensland and long term supply planning for the region. 

 

Link to SEQ Regional Water Strategy >