Estimating COVID-19 impact for South West Water

Edge Analytics collated a range of datasets to illustrate and estimate how COVID-19 restrictions affected population mobility and led people to spend a greater amount of time in their homes, increasing domestic energy and water use whilst altering the corresponding volumes of commercial use.

The Extra-HOURS Model employed these datasets to estimate the extra hours spent at home per day at various stages of the pandemic. The model estimates these hours at monthly intervals, and considers altered population dynamics across eleven key components: the labour force; schoolchildren, UK students, overseas students, excess deaths, home movers, migrant workers, second home populations, day visits, night visits and visits overseas.

Applicable to any geography, the example here for a large area in the South East of England indicates that, on average, an extra 3.2 million hours per day were spent in domestic properties during the COVID-19 months, peaking at 5 million per day in April-May 2020.