Population Forecasting Methods
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WATER DEMANDS AND ESTIMATION
• In the design of any waterworks project it is necessary to determine the
total quantity of a water required for various purposes by the city.
• But as there are so many factors involved in demand of water, it is not
possible to accurately determine the actual demand.
• Certain empirical formulae and thumb rules are employed in determining
the water demand, which is very near to the actual demand.
Types of water demands of a city or town:
• Domestic water demand (cooking, bathing, clothes washing etc)
• Industrial demand (depends on type of industry available e.g. mills, brewery
• Demand for public use (public parks, gardens, public fountains)
• Institution and commercial demand (universities, shopping centers, hotels etc)
• Fire demand (to put out the fire , can be a huge demand)
• Loses and wastes (All the water, which goes in the distribution, pipes does not
reach the consumers, illegal connects, pipe bursts and leakages))
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Factors affecting per capita demand
• Climatic conditions: hot or cold environments
• Size of the community: larger the community the more water demand
• Living standard of the people: The per capita demand of the town
increases with the standard of living of the people
• Cost of water: The cost of water directly affects its demand.
• Industrial and commercial activities: As the quantity of water required in
certain industries is much more than domestic demand, their presence in
the town will enormously increase per capita demand of the town.
• System of sanitation: Per capita demand of the towns having water
carriage system will be more than the town where this system is not being
used.
• Pressure in the distribution system: The rate of water consumption
increase in the pressure of the building and even with the required
pressure at the farthest point, the consumption of water will
automatically increase.
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Variations in demand
• The per capita demand of town is the average consumption of
water for a year. In practice it has been seen that this demand does
not remain uniform throughout the year but it various from season
to season, even hour to hour.
• Seasonal variation - In summer the water demand is maximum, because
people will use more water in bathing, cooling, lawn watering.
• Daily variation - depends on the general habits of people, climatic
conditions and character of city as industrial, commercial or residential.
Weekends, holidays
• Hourly variation - in highly industrial city where both day and night shifts
are working, the consumption in night may be more.
Design Period
• The number of years for which the designs of the water works have been
done is known as design period. Mostly water works are designed for
design period of 20-30 years, which is fairly good period.
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Population forecasting methods
When the design period is fixed the next step is to determine the population
of a town or city population of a town depends upon the factors like births,
deaths, migration and annexation.
For the prediction of population, it is better to study the development of
other similar towns, which have developed under the same circumstances,
because the development of the predicted town will be more or less on the
same lines.
The following are the standard methods by which the forecasting
population is done.
i. Arithmetical increase method
ii. Geometrical increase method
iii. Incremental increase method
iv. Decreasing rate of growth method
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1. Arithmetical increase method
• This method is based on the assumption that the population is increasing
at a constant rate. The population after ‘n’ decades can be determined by
the formula.
𝑃𝑛 = 𝑃 + 𝑛 ∗ 𝑐
• P = the present population, n = number of decades; c = constant
determined by the average of increase of ‘n’ decades
2. Geometrical increase methodP
• This method is based on the assumption that the percentage increase in
population from decade to decade remains constant. In this method the
average percentage of growth of last few decades is determined, the
population forecasting is done on the basis that percentage increase per
decade will be the same.
n
r Pn – future population after n decades
Pn P0 1
100 P0– present population
n – number of decades
r - growth rate
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3. Incremental method
This method is improvement over the above two methods. The average
increase in the population is determined by the arithmetical method and to
this is added the average of the net incremental increase once for each future
decade.
𝑛(𝑛 + 1)
𝑃𝑛 = 𝑃𝑜 + 𝑛𝑥 + 𝑦
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• Pn – future population after n decades Po – present population
• n – number of decades x – average increase y – incremental increase
4. Decreasing rate of growth
This method is adopted for a town which is reaching saturation population
where the rate of population growth is decreasing
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The data tabulated in the table below was obtained from
Statistics Botswana to design for a pipeline with a design life
of 20 years.
Population in Mmanoko village
Use the three methods to forecast the population for
Mmanoko in the year 2046
Year 1991 2001 2011 2021
Population 505 763 932 1846