Water Contamination Impact Evaluation and Source-Area Isolation Using Decision Trees
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 138, Issue 5
Abstract
The security of drinking water distribution operation is an important issue that has received increasing interest within the last few years. The U.S. EPA has issued guidelines for water utilities regarding which qualitative and quantitative metrics to monitor, and what response actions to take from the moment a contamination event alarm has been triggered, until the contamination has been accommodated and the system has returned to normal operation. Expanded sampling is a type of response action in which the water utilities examine water quality at certain locations in the network after a contamination event has been detected to help evaluate the contamination impact and locate the source-area. In this work, we propose a computational approach, based on decision trees, for choosing a sequence of nodes in the distribution network to perform expanded sampling, such that the water contamination impact is evaluated and the source-area is isolated, with as few manual quality samplings as possible. To illustrate the solution methodology, we present results based on a simplified and a benchmark water distribution system.
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Acknowledgments
This research work has been funded by the European Commission 7th Framework Program, under grant INSFO-ICT-270428 (iSense), and by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundations Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Innovation, co-funded by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Regional Development Fund.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 138 • Issue 5 • September 2012
Pages: 562 - 570
Copyright
© 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 5, 2010
Accepted: Oct 7, 2011
Published online: Oct 10, 2011
Published in print: Sep 1, 2012
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