Battle of Water Demand Forecasting: An Optimized Deep Learning Model †

Ensuring a steady supply of drinking water is crucial for communities, but predicting how much water will be needed is challenging because of uncertainties. As a part of Battle of Water Demand Forecasting (BWDF), this study delves into the application of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks for water demand forecasting in a city situated in the northeast of Italy. The focus is on forecasting the demand across ten distinct District Metering Areas (DMAs) over four distinct stages. To enhance the performance of the LSTM model, an evolutionary optimization algorithm is integrated, aiming to fine-tune the model’s hyper-parameters effectively. Results indicate the promising potential of this approach for short-term demand forecasting.