Precautionary measures and governmental regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave have drastically altered daily activities and hence water consumption patterns. Many people had to change their working routines, the organization of childcare and hygiene practices. While first evidence appears on the impacts of COVID-19 on, e.g., carbon emissions, energy demand and water treatment, even indicating an unexpected increase in water consumption during that period, no study has investigated the pandemic’s sole and in-depth implications for water supply so far. This paper investigates hourly and daily water consumption volumes of a utility in northern Germany for the first wave of the pandemic. We performed a linear mixed model to compare the 2020 daily water consumption volumes with previous years. We eliminated the effects of climate using Bayesian statistic in order to carve out and estimate the original COVID-19 effect. We also compared hourly water consumption of similar time periods and calculated the percentage difference between 2020 and the two previous years. Our results reveal about 14.3% (3 968 m³) higher residential water consumption per day with higher morning and evening demand peaks during the day. We hypothesis that the reasons for the increasing water demand may be found in changed behavioral routines with an important question for water utilities, if and which of these new dynamics may persist after COVID-19 and hence pose a challenge for long-term infrastructure planning.

中文翻译：

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在德国发生Covid-19大流行的第一波期间，每日的家庭需水量增加

在COVID-19大流行的第一波期间采取的预防措施和政府法规极大地改变了日常活动，从而改变了用水方式。许多人不得不改变他们的工作习惯，托儿和卫生习惯的组织。尽管有关COVID-19对例如碳排放，能源需求和水处理的影响的初步证据似乎出现了，甚至表明该期间的用水量出乎意料的增加，但尚无研究调查该流行病对水的唯一和深入的影响。到目前为止供应。本文调查了德国北部第一波大流行病的每小时和每天的用水量。我们执行了线性混合模型，将2020年的每日用水量与前几年进行了比较。我们使用贝叶斯统计量消除了气候的影响，以便得出并估计原始的COVID-19效应。我们还比较了相似时间段的每小时用水量，并计算了2020年与前两年之间的百分比差异。我们的结果显示约14.3％（3,968 m³）每天的住宅用水量增加，早晨和晚上的需求量在白天达到峰值。我们假设在不断变化的行为习惯中发现了水需求增加的原因，这对水务公司来说是一个重要问题，在COVID-19之后这些新动力是否持续以及其中哪些会持续下去，因此对长期基础设施规划构成了挑战。