Introduction

The widespread provision of safe drinking water to the general population is considered one of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century. A key element of water supply infrastructure is the premise plumbing systems (PPS). The Premise Plumbing Modeling (PPM) Task Committee was established in summer 2019 as part of the Water Distribution Systems Analysis Committee. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book covers critical aspects of PPM, including, but not limited to, demand estimation, hydraulics and water quality fundamentals, current PPM modeling capabilities and limitations, design, code, standards, operations, and instrumentation. It covers water demand, which is critical to understanding the hydraulic and water quality phenomena within premise plumbing. The book also covers the fundamental hydraulic phenomena in PPS. It discusses the range of simulation models that have been and could be applied to PPS, including their limitations.