Variation of Drinking Water Consumption Due to the Health Emergency of SARS-CoV-2 Through Dynamic Modeling in Macas City, Amazon from Ecuador

ABSTRACT

The consumption of drinking water in the populations in the last 20 years has varied for different reasons, thus, it is necessary to determine its behavior for sustainable use of the resource. The objective of this work was to present the variation in drinking water consumption during the Sars-Cov-2 health emergency through dynamic modeling in the city of Macas in the Amazon region of Ecuador. The integrated moving average autoregressive model was used for the study (ARIMA), predicting the behavior of drinking water consumption for the year 2021 in the different neighborhoods of the city and relating this result with socioeconomic variables. The prediction for the year 2021 presented a decrease of 0.21% in the volume consumed compared to 2020, in April 2021 an increase of 85.21% was observed compared to the consumption of 2019, which can be attributed to the effects of the pandemic. The highest water consumption occurred in the cluster of neighborhoods with the highest population density, medium-high socioeconomic status, and high availability of basic services. The study aims to provide a valid alternative for decision-making in the framework of a health crisis, as well as possible conflicts in vulnerable areas in the face of the pandemic that affects the entire world. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.