Patterns and Predictors of Residential Indoor Water Use Across Major US Cities

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Mayer, Landon T. Marston This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-5098971/v2 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 2 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Show more versions Abstract This study investigates residential indoor water consumption variability across 39 US cities using data from 26,441 single-family smart water meters. Employing functional data analysis and mixed-effects random forest, we identified distinct usage patterns across city clusters, with 13 high and 6 low water-using cities (all in coastal California) differing significantly from 20 medium water-using cities. Shower and toilet use were primary drivers of indoor use differences between clusters, influenced by both behavioral and fixture efficiency factors. The presence of appliances, certain household features, and weather also affect indoor water use, with varying influence on indoor water use across clusters. Our findings highlight the effectiveness of state-level water efficiency interventions and emphasize the importance of considering both behavioral factors and appliance efficiency in conservation strategies, providing valuable insights for targeted water demand management in urban areas. Civil Engineering Hydrology smart water monitoring indoor residential water use single-family households functional data analysis residential end use Full Text Additional Declarations The authors declare potential competing interests as follows: M.Y.N. and L.T.M. declare no financial or non-financial competing interests. G.B. is an employee of Flume, the company that produced and owns the data used in this study. P.W.M. declares no financial competing interests but discloses that he has been a strategic partner and consultant with Flume since 2019. All authors declare no non-financial competing interests Supplementary Files Naserietal2025SI.pdf Supplementary Information Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 2 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Show more versions Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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