Transforming how water is managed in the West

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of a new data infrastructure in California that centralizes water use data from utilities to improve water management, efficiency, and reliability amid severe drought conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a pioneering publicly-owned data infrastructure that enables efficient water data sharing and analysis, supporting water management and resource optimization.

Findings

Early results show improved water efficiency programs.

Tools help optimize system operations.

Potential for a civic analytics marketplace.

Abstract

California is challenged by its worst drought in 600 years and faces future water uncertainty. Pioneering new data infrastructure to integrate water use data across California's more than a thousand water providers will support water managers in ensuring water reliability. The California Data Collaborative is a coalition of municipal water utilities serving ten percent of California's population who are delivering on that promise by centralizing customer water use data in a recently completed pilot project. This project overview describes tools that have shown promising early results in improving water efficiency programs and optimizing system operations. Longer term, these tools will help navigate future uncertainty and support water managers in ensuring water reliability no matter what the future holds. The uniquely publicly-owned data infrastructure deployed in this project is envisioned to enable the world's first "marketplace of civic analytics" to power the volume of water efficiency measurements water managers require at a radically more cost effective price. More broadly, this data-utility approach is adaptable to domains other than water and shows specific potential for the broader universe of natural resources.