Ensuring adequate water supply to urban areas is a challenging task due to factors such as rapid urban growth, increasing water
demand and climate change. In developing a sustainable water supply system, it is important to identify the dominant water demand
factors for any given water supply scheme. This paper applies principal components analysis to identify the factors that dominate
residential water demand using the Blue Mountains Water Supply System in Australia as a case study. The results show that the influence
of community intervention factors (e.g. use of water efficient appliances and rainwater tanks) on water demand are among the most
significant. The result also confirmed that the community intervention programmes and water pricing policy together can play a noticeable
role in reducing the overall water demand. On the other hand, the influence of rainfall on water demand is found to be very limited,
while temperature shows some degree of correlation with water demand. The results of this study would help water authorities to plan for
effective water demand management strategies and to develop a water demand forecasting model with appropriate climatic factors to
achieve sustainable water resources management. The methodology developed in this paper can be adapted to other water supply systems
to identify the influential factors in water demand modelling and to devise an effective demand management strategy.
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