Use of Relative Metrics

In order to quantify our water use reductions and to identify further opportunities, the campus could report not only the total absolute potable water usage, but also the water use relative to the number of weighted campus users and relative to gross square footage of building space.  This is important because the number of campus users and the total building square footage have a direct effect on water demands, and evaluating changes in these metrics would be helpful in formulating water conservation strategies and assessing the results of conservation activities. 

Providing this data would provide benchmarking of our campus relative to institutional peers and would support new water conservation measures that could establish our campus as a leader in water conservation.  For example, Figure 6 provides a comparative analysis of current total water use per weighted campus user for some peer institutions in the Midwest.  This figure shows that our FY14 water demand per weighted campus user was 23,821 gallons, which is in the middle of the pack for peer institutions.  In contrast, the FY30 water use target would correspond to approximately 17,300 gallons per weighted user (assuming no growth in users), which is lower than the current water use of all the institutions shown in Figure 6.

Data Display

The campus could publicly display water quantity and quality data to encourage transparency, instructional use, and campus-wide participation in water conservation activities.  The site interface could be modeled after the current energy dashboard to facilitate consistency, and could potentially be implemented in tandem with the energy dashboard to leverage the interest of current users of that system.