Patterns in Potential Impacts Associated with Contamination Events in Water Distribution Systems
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 137, Issue 1
Abstract
Properly designing contamination warning systems requires an understanding of potential public health impacts for a range of contaminated water systems and a wide range of contaminants. To address this need, we determined potential impacts for 12 actual systems serving populations ranging from to over persons by simulating contamination events for the systems. We found several consistent patterns in the estimated impacts (defined as the size of the population receiving an ingestion dose above a given level). Significant impacts, those similar to worst-case impacts, result from injections of contaminants at only a minority of nodes. For contaminants with high thresholds for adverse effects, significant exposures are concentrated near the injection location, and impacts are not sensitive to population served. However, for contaminants with low thresholds, significant exposures are present over a significant fraction of the system, and impacts are sensitive to population. When exposures are concentrated near the injection node, the area affected tends to decrease with increasing population density. Accounting for all possible exposures and events may complicate the design of contamination warning systems.
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Acknowledgments
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Office of Research and Development funded, managed, and participated in the research described here under an interagency agreement. The views expressed in this paper are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the USEPA. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use. Work at Argonne National Laboratory was sponsored by the USEPA under an interagency agreement through U.S. Department of Energy Contract No. DOEDE-AC02-06CH11357. All postsimulation data analysis and preparation of graphics for this paper were done with R (R Development Core Team 2008). Anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 137 • Issue 1 • January 2011
Pages: 1 - 9
Copyright
© 2011 ASCE.
History
Received: Jun 4, 2009
Accepted: Mar 11, 2010
Published online: Mar 16, 2010
Published in print: Jan 2011
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