Residential Water Usage & Correlating Data in California Cities

Presenter: Isabella Wotring

Co-Presenter(s):
Emily Dewing, William Doran

Presenter Status: Undergraduate student

Academic Year: 22-23

Semester: Spring

Faculty Mentor: Kevin Fang

Department: Geography, Environment, & Planning

Funding Source/Sponsor: Class Project

Abstract:
Water is a limited resource in California, and though we may not be able to control supply directly, we can modify how we interact with our environment to be more efficient with what we are given. We asked what kind of variables might relate to residential water use in California cities, and hypothesized the positivity or negativity of the correlations. We looked at aspects of what has been built, as well as explored variables in the realm of demographics and behavior. Data was gathered from sources such as ESRI's Community Analyst and the US Census Bureau. For variables we could not find direct data for, we came up with proxies where data was available, and made calculations as needed. Data was filtered, reconciled, and a correlation coefficient (r) was calculated for each variable of interest.