Proposal for a solution supporting a rational water use in multi-family residential buildings – implementation in property management

Motives: Creating a functionality of a software system for managing multi-family residential buildings which could support property managers and encourage households to reduce their water consumption. Aim: Developing a proposal for a solution supporting a more rational use of water and billing individual households in multi-family buildings for water they use.Results: The created methodology includes automatic collection and recording of data from water meters in a property management software system, creation of algorithms describing relationships in water meter data, creation of algorithms supporting optimal water use in a property and incorporating the developed solution into the software system. The created algorithms were based on the method of moving average of three consecutive readings which is clear for all users. This enables automatic verification of water use and its visualisation using graphs. The created solution was incorporated into one of the property management software systems used in Poland (IAN24), tested and implemented. The created functionality allows property managers e.g. to estimate future water use, which is important for calculating advance payments towards water bills. It also allows managers to automatically detect various types of anomalies, such as meter failures. In addition, a dynamic method of billing according to the proposed methodology may encourage households to reduce their water consumption and thus reduce the impact for the environment.