Investigating a Diversified and Decentralized Water Distribution System to Enhance Water Supply Resilience to Disruptive Events
Publication: World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2023
ABSTRACT
Conventional water infrastructure, particularly with a centralized water resources and supply systems, has provided reliable water services. However, recent water crises, such as the severe droughts in Texas and California in 2022 and the water outage in Jackson, Mississippi, from a pump failure in the city’s water treatment plant, highlight the challenges of dealing with extreme and uncertain disruptions. To address the uncertainties, various systems in the fields of computer networking, ecosystems, financial asset management, and armed forces have employed diversification and decentralization strategies. In this context, this study presents the configuration and operation of water distribution system (WDS) composed of decentralized sub-networks including diverse water sources (e.g., rainwater and reclaimed water) as a resilient water system. First, this study built a lab-scale physical model of a diversified and decentralized WDN and demonstrated its operational and physical failures under various disruption scenarios (e.g., intentional pump-shutoff and pipe leakage). Then, using a quantifiable resilience measure, the resilience of the diversified and decentralized WDN was compared with that of a centralized WDN (a single water source) in its configuration and operation. The results showed that the diversified and decentralized WDN has the higher resilience effects than the traditional WDNs and discussed the practical implementation of the diversified and decentralized WDN to improve the resilience of current water infrastructure systems. The findings will provide engineering insights into how the diversification and decentralization strategies are incorporated into the current water systems to deal with uncertain and extreme disruptions with resilience.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
Abimbola, S., Baatiema, L., and Bigdeli, M. (2019). “The impacts of decentralization on Health System Equity, efficiency and resilience: A realist synthesis of the evidence” Health Policy and Planning, 34(8), 605–617. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapol/czz055.
Bieker, S., Cornel, P., and Wagner, M. (2010). “Semicentralised supply and treatment systems: Integrated infrastructure solutions for fast growing urban areas.” Water Science and Technology, 61(11), 2905–2913. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2010.189.
Blackmore, J. M., and Plant, R. A. (2008). “Risk and resilience to enhance sustainability with application to urban water systems.” Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 134(3), 224–233. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9496(2008)134:3(224).
Boksanski, M. (2022). “California’s drought 2022.” myUSF. Assessed November 1, 2022. https://myusf.usfca.edu/sustainability/newsletter/california-drought-2022.
Coombes, P., Bethke, K., Cullen, A., Allan, A., Comley, J., and Pamminger, F. (2011). “A water smart plan for Doncaster Hill—Transforming a principal activity centre into a key component of a sustainable city.” In Proceeding of Planning Institute of Australian National Conference, 1–20. Kingston, Australia.
Daigger, G. T., and Crawford, G. V. (2007). “Enhancing water system security and sustainability by incorporating centralized and decentralized water reclamation and reuse into urban water management systems.” Journal of Environmental Engineering and Management, 17 (1): 1–10.
Domènech, L., and Saurí, D. (2010). “Socio-technical transitions in water scarcity contexts: Public acceptance of Greywater Reuse Technologies in the metropolitan area of Barcelona.” Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 55(1), 53–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.07.001.
Fletcher, T. D., Mitchell, V. G., Deletic, A., Ladson, T. R., and Séven, A. (2007). “Is stormwater harvesting beneficial to urban waterway environmental flows?” Water Science and Technology, 55(4), 265–272. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2007.117.
Gallo, P., Nguyen, U. Q., Barone, G., and van Hien, P. (2018). “DeCyMo: Decentralized cyber-physical system for monitoring and controlling industries and homes.” 2018 IEEE 4th International Forum on Research and Technology for Society and Industry (RTSI). https://doi.org/10.1109/RTSI.2018.8548507.
Kazak, J. K., Szewrański, S., Pilawka, T., Tokarczyk-Dorociak, K., Janiak, K., and Świąder, M. (2021). “Changes in water demand patterns in a European city due to restrictions caused by the covid-19 pandemic.” Desalination and water treatment, 222, 1–15.
Kuznetsova, E., Ruiz, C., Li, Y.-F., and Zio, E. (2015). “Analysis of robust optimization for decentralized microgrid energy management under uncertainty.” International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, 64: 815–832. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2014.07.064.
Leigh, N., and Lee, H. (2019). “Sustainable and resilient urban water systems: The role of decentralization and planning.” Sustainability, 11(3), 918. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11030918.
Mazereeuw, M., and Yarina, E. (2017). “Emergency preparedness hub: Designing decentralized systems for disaster resilience.” Journal of Architectural Education, 71(1), 65–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/10464883.2017.1260928.
Méndez, M. (2022). “Texas is facing its worst drought since 2011. here’s what you need to know.” The Texas Tribune, Accessed November 5, 2022. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/19/texas-drought-water-conservation.
Missimer, T. M., Danser, P. A., Amy, G., and Pankratz, T. (2014). “Water crisis: The Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, Regional Water Supply Conflict.” Water Policy, 16(4), 669–689. https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2014.131.
Mitchell, V., Deletic, A., Fletcher, T. D., Hatt, B. E., and McCarthy, D. T. (2007). “Achieving multiple benefits from stormwater harvesting.” Water science and technology, 55 (4): 135–144. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2007.103.
Ngo, T. T., Yoo, D. G., and Kim, J. H. (2018). “Decentralization-based optimization of Detention Reservoir Systems for flood reduction in urban drainage areas.” Urban Water Journal, 15(5), 445–452. https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2018.1508600.
Poustie, M. S., Deletic, A., Brown, R. R., Wong, T., de Haan, J. F., and Skinner, R. (2015). “Sustainable urban water futures in developing countries: the centralised, decentralised or hybrid dilemma.” Urban Water Journal, 12 (7): 543–558. https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2014.916725.
Sapkota, M., Arora, M., Malano, H., Moglia, M., Sharma, A., George, B., and Pamminger, F. (2015). “An integrated framework for assessment of hybrid water supply systems.” Water, 8 (1): 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/w8010004.
Sharma, A., Burn, S., Gardner, T., and Gregory, A. (2010). “Role of decentralised systems in the transition of urban water systems.” Water Supply, 10(4), 577–583. https://doi.org/10.2166/ws.2010.187.
Shin, S., and Park, H. (2018). “Achieving cost-efficient diversification of water infrastructure system against uncertainty using modern portfolio theory.” Journal of Hydroinformatics, 20(3), 739–750. https://doi.org/10.2166/hydro.2018.240.
Shin, S., Lee, S., Burian, S. J., Judi, D. R., and McPherson, T. (2020). “Evaluating resilience of water distribution networks to operational failures from Cyber-Physical attacks.” Journal of Environmental Engineering, 146(3). https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)EE.1943-7870.0001665.
Shin, S., Lee, S., Judi, D., Parvania, M., Goharian, E., McPherson, T., and Burian, S. (2018). “A systematic review of Quantitative Resilience Measures for Water Infrastructure Systems.” Water, 10(2), 164. https://doi.org/10.3390/w10020164.
Sitzenfrei, R., and Rauch, W. (2014). “Investigating transitions of centralized water infrastructure to Decentralized Solutions – an integrated approach.” Procedia Engineering, 70, 1549–1557. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2014.02.171.
Todini, E. (2000). “Looped water distribution networks design using a resilience index based heuristic approach.” Urban Water. 2 (2): 115–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1462-0758(00)00049-2.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
History
Published online: May 18, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Ecosystems
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Infrastructure
- Infrastructure resilience
- System reliability
- Systems engineering
- Systems management
- Water and water resources
- Water management
- Water policy
- Water reclamation
- Water resources
- Water shortage
- Water supply
- Water supply systems
- Water treatment
- Water treatment plants
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.