Testing Contamination Source Identification Methods for Water Distribution Networks
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 142, Issue 4
Abstract
In the event of contamination in a water distribution network (WDN), source identification (SI) methods that analyze sensor data can be used to identify the source location(s). Knowledge of the source location and characteristics are important to inform contamination control and cleanup operations. Various SI strategies that have been developed by researchers differ in their underlying assumptions and solution techniques. The following manuscript presents a systematic procedure for testing and evaluating SI methods. The performance of these SI methods is affected by various factors including the size of WDN model, measurement error, modeling error, time and number of contaminant injections, and time and number of measurements. This paper includes test cases that vary these factors and evaluates three SI methods on the basis of accuracy and specificity. The tests are used to review and compare these different SI methods, highlighting their strengths in handling various identification scenarios. These SI methods and a testing framework that includes the test cases and analysis tools presented in this paper have been integrated into EPA’s Water Security Toolkit (WST), a suite of software tools to help researchers and others in the water industry evaluate and plan various response strategies in case of a contamination incident. Finally, a set of recommendations are made for users to consider when working with different categories of SI methods.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support provided by Sandia National Laboratories and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Sandia National Laboratories is a multiprogram laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04 94AL85000. SAND Number SAND2014-20020 J. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through its Office of Research and Development funded and collaborated in the research described here under an Interagency Agreement (IA # DW8992192801) with the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories. It has been subject to an administrative review but does not necessarily reflect the views of the Agency. No official endorsement should be inferred. EPA does not endorse the purchase or sale of any commercial products or services.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 142 • Issue 4 • April 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 7, 2014
Accepted: Sep 22, 2015
Published online: Jan 6, 2016
Published in print: Apr 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Jun 6, 2016
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