abstract: Urban water systems face sustainability challenges ranging from water quality, leaks, over-use, energy consumption, and long-term supply concerns. Resiliency challenges include the capacity to respond to drought, managing pipe deterioration, responding to natural disasters, and preventing terrorism. One strategy to enhance sustainability and resiliency is the development and adoption of smart water grids. A smart water grid incorporates networked monitoring and control devices into its structure, which provides diverse, real-time information about the system, as well as enhanced control. Data provide input for modeling and analysis, which informs control decisions, allowing for improvement in sustainability and resiliency. While smart water grids hold much potential, there are also potential tradeoffs and adoption challenges. More publicly available cost-benefit analyses are needed, as well as system-level research and application, rather than the current focus on individual technologies. This thesis seeks to fill one of these gaps by analyzing the cost and environmental benefits of smart irrigation controllers. Smart irrigation controllers can save water by adapting watering schedules to climate and soil conditions. The potential benefit of smart irrigation controllers is particularly high in southwestern U.S. states, where the arid climate makes water scarcer and increases watering needs of landscapes. To inform the technology development process, a design for environment (DfE) method was developed, which overlays economic and environmental performance parameters under different operating conditions. This method is applied to characterize design goals for controller price and water savings that smart irrigation controllers must meet to yield life cycle carbon dioxide reductions and economic savings in southwestern U.S. states, accounting for regional variability in electricity and water prices and carbon overhead. Results from applying the model to smart irrigation controllers in the Southwest suggest that some areas are significantly easier to design for. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Civil and Environmental Engineering 2012

The innovation of electrical utilities in creating smart electrical grids has superseded that of water utilities in analogous efforts. While many water utilities are now using smart water technologies, they lack the virtual command center that allows for two-way communication for more effective forecasting, load balancing, preventive methods, emergency and master planning, and level of service delivery while ensuring environmental justice and enhancing the responsible use of resources. In this dissertation, I propose the idea of the Integrated Water Distribution System (IWDS) to overcome this challenge. IWDS coordinates management of water supply and demand in a way that benefits both the water utility and the customer. IWDS also allows for greater control over monitoring, operation and maintenance, security, asset management, artificial intelligence, and delivery of water in order to maximize economic, environmental, and social welfare. To provide a way forward for IWDS and bring water services onto a technological level equal to that of other infrastructure systems, I call for greater coordination and integration of smart water technology and data, including environmental justice evaluations, and improved customer engagement. As a demand side management (DSM) tool and smart water technology component of IWDS, smart irrigation controllers (SICs) have the potential to ensure water utilities are resilient to growth and can manage peak day demands. SICs, which interface with soil moisture, evapotranspiration, or weather sensors, have been promoted as a demand-side management tool for this purpose. I review the body of research on residential smart irrigation controllers and their effectiveness. I find that smart irrigation controllers consistently reduce water demand by 15% among general users and more than 40% among indulgent users. A hydraulic model simulation using EPANET demonstrates the effectiveness of residential SICs in shifting and shaving peak demands associated with outdoor irrigation. The pressurized irrigation system for Highland, Utah, USA, is modeled with irrigation demands on a baseline scenario compared to an intervention scenario. By employing the intervention, the water system experiences many positive impacts. Without the peak shifting and shaving adjustments, costly additional capital facility improvements would be needed to maintain the same level of service. The model indicates that the SICs, if providing a 30% conservation effect (intervention scenario with SIC conservation), would shave the peak demand allowing for greater optimization and efficiency. This is the first hydraulic model analysis to demonstrate the DSM effectiveness of SICs.