ABSTRACT:

iUTAH researchers contacted municipal water provider organizations in the 12 cities represented in the 2014 household survey that maintain billing records or other water use records. Of the 12, 11 cities released data under a strict confidentiality agreement outlined in a memorandum of understanding to link water bills from months in 2014 to parcels or buildings where individual survey respondents were located. The water bills were matched to results from a 2014 household survey. Researchers at Utah State University and the University of Utah implemented the ‘2014 iUTAH Household Survey’ with over 2,300 randomly selected households in 2014 in 23 neighborhoods in 12 Utah communities. The survey included detailed individual- and household-level information about water management behaviors, perceptions of water resource conditions, and attitudes toward a range of water policies and programs.

The survey research team leaders agreed to:
• Treat any water use or billing records with care and discretion and to respect the privacy rights of individual water system customers.
• Aggregate the results of our analysis so that the historic water use levels and water bills of any individual customer, building or parcel are not released in any publicly accessible document, presentation, or report.
• Never share the detailed water use records with any other individual or group without the expressed written permission of the municipal water provider organization.
• Ensure that any person who has access to the raw individual-level survey and water use datasets have completed institutional review board human subjects research training, are currently certified and authorized to work with the data, and agree to the stringent confidentiality protocols listed above.
• Not reveal the specific location or identity of individual respondents to the 2014 iUTAH Household Survey to any other individual or organization, including the partner municipal water provider organization.

The municipal water provider organization representatives agreed to:
• Provide an electronic dataset of billing or water use records that permit a reliable estimate of actual rates of water consumption at the parcel or building scale.
• Address, tax parcel, or other information that allows these records to be linked to the individual parcels, buildings, or customer addresses.
• Not require the research team to reveal to the municipal provider the identity of which specific parcels or households were either sampled into or responded to our survey.

The data cleaning process included the following steps:
a. Calculate monthly estimates
b. Calculate per capita based on household size
c. Calculate per acreage
d. Calculate tiered cost
e. Match household survey responses with water bill data

ABSTRACT:

These data reflect results of a household survey implemented in the summer of 2014. The survey randomly sampled households from 23 neighborhoods (census block groups) across 12 cities and 3 counties. Neighborhoods were purposively selected to represent different configurations of social, built, and natural environmental characteristics using the "iUTAH Urban Typology" (https://www.hydroshare.org/resource/84f00a1d8ae641a8af2d994a74f4ccfb/). Data were collected using a drop-off/pick-up methodology, and produced an overall response rate of over 62% (~2,400 respondents). The questionnaire included detailed questions related to household water use and landscaping behaviors, perceptions of water supply and quality, participation in water based recreation, concerns about water issues, and preferences for a range of local and state water policies.

Here we are making public an anonymized version of the large household survey dataset. To protect the identity of respondents, we have removed a few variables and truncated other variables.

Files included here:
englishsurveys and spanishsurveys: These folders contain the survey questionnaires used specific to each neighborhood.
Codebook in various formats: Tables (xls and csv files) with a list and definition of questions/variables, which correspond to the columns in the data files, and the encoding of the responses.
Dataset in various formats: Tables (csv, xls, sas, sav, dta files) containing numeric responses to each question. Each participant's responses correspond to a row of data. Each question corresponds to a column of data. Interpretation of the coded responses is found in the data codebook.
Maps: maps of the neighborhoods surveyed.
SummaryReports: Summaries of the results that compare across three counties, summary reports for each county, highlight reports for each city.

Summary reports are also available at http://data.iutahepscor.org/mdf/Data/household_survey/ including an overall report that provides comparisons of how these vary across the three counties where we collected data (Cache, Salt Lake, and Wasatch) as well as summary reports for each county and highlights reports for each city.

ABSTRACT:

These data reflect estimates of the water use for various purposes for each of Utah's public water systems. The data were originally collected by the Utah Division of Water Rights in their annual surveys of public water systems, then cleaned and checked by staff at the Utah Division of Water Resources. Estimates are made for residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional users, and separates water used from domestic/potable water sources and secondary irrigation water supplies. The data were obtained from UDWR staff and compiled by Douglas Jackson-Smith and his students in 2014 and 2015.

ABSTRACT:

Researchers at Utah State University created a short survey instrument to gather information about the views and concerns of Utah residents related to water issues. This survey was designed to give the public a chance to share their perceptions and concerns about water supply, water quality, and other related issues. While finding out what the ‘average citizen’ feels about key water issues was one goal of the project, the most interesting and important results are found in exploring ways in which perspectives about water vary across the population based on where people live and their demographic background (gender, age, education, etc.). This survey helps bring a voice to groups of citizens typically not represented in water policy debates. The findings have been and continue to be shared with water managers and decision makers who are planning for local and state water system sustainability.

This survey effort is also a key outreach and education component of the iUTAH project. High school groups, college and university classes, and others are invited to collaborate with iUTAH faculty to conduct public intercept surveys. Co-collection and analysis of survey data provides a hands-on learning opportunity about the principles of social science research. This effort helps increase awareness about the complexity of water issues in Utah, and the methods through which scientists learn about the public’s thoughts and concerns. Between July 2014 and April 2016, the survey has been implemented with collaborating students and faculty from the University of Utah, Utah Valley University, Weber State University, Salt Lake Community College, Southern Utah University, Dixie State University, and Snow College.

The survey involved using a structured protocol to randomly approach adults entering grocery stores in communities across the state, and inviting them to complete a 3-minute questionnaire about thier perceptions and concerns about water issues in Utah. The survey was self-administered on an iPad tablet and uploaded to a web server using the Qualtrics Offline App.

The project generated responses from over 7,000 adults, with a response rate of just over 42% . Comparisons of the respondents with census data suggest that they are largely representative of the communities where data were collected and of the state's adult population.

The data are anonymous and are available as a public dataset here. The data also served as the basis for the development of an open-source web-based survey data viewer that can be found at: http://data.iutahepscor.org/surveys/ and were also reported in Jones et al. (2016). We encourage users to use the viewer to explore the survey results.

The files below include a document describing in detail the method/protocol used in the study, and copies of field materials we used to implement the project. We also include copies of the full dataset and a codebook in various formats.

ABSTRACT:

This dataset and technical report summarizes the methodology and results of a project to develop a water-relevant typology of urban neighborhoods for the greater Wasatch Range Metropolitan Area in northern Utah.

The technical report provides details about the original sources of data and analytic methodology deployed to create the typology. The work is also summarized in a peer-reviewed open-access article published in Cities and the Environment (Available at: http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cate/vol9/iss1/5 and copied below).

For users who wish to see copies of the underlying datasets (all aggregated at the census block group scale) for the study area, we have included a text file codebook and files in various formats (.csv, .xlsx, and .sav) for public use.

The effort was supported by the NSF-funded iUTAH project, and has been used to guide the design and implementation of an urban water observatory that captures social, built, and natural system characteristics.