CCDeW: Climate Change and Demand for Water.

The Climate Change and Demand for Water Revisited project (CCDeW) revisits and updates the benchmark study by Herrington (1996) and takes advantage of new data sets, regional coverage of demand projections and new methodologies for climate impact assessment. Domestic demand, industrial and commercial water use and irrigated agriculture and horticulture are included in the CCDeW study. Leakage was excluded from the CCDeW study. This report presents the outcome of an extensive UK research programme concerning: demand forecasting; demand management; sensitivity of demand to climatic variations; and sources of risk and uncertainty. While the CCDeW study focuses on demand, climate change uncertainties feed into supply side and demand estimates of water requirements. Therefore, the report’s conclusions should be seen as one element in the dynamic management of the supply/demand balance over the course of the next twenty years and beyond (see Section 9). Clearly, the extent to which water consumption will be influenced by climate change depends upon the sensitivity of different sectors to specific aspects of climate change as well as potential behavioural and regulatory changes, in part related to different socio-economic and climatic future