Robustness of Designs for Drinking Water Contamination Warning Systems under Uncertain Conditions
Publication: Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 140, Issue 10
Abstract
Contamination warning systems (CWSs) for drinking water distribution systems (WDSs) are used to reduce the potential adverse effects of intentional or accidental WDS contamination. They are designed on the basis of possible contamination events but often address only a narrow range in event conditions. The influence on their performance of conditions different from those assumed in the design generally is not considered. Using results from simulations done with network models for 11 actual WDSs, it is shown here that CWS performance for high-consequence events can degrade substantially (by an order of magnitude) when conditions such as contaminant toxicity and injection time differ from those used in the design. Generally, increasing the number of sensors does not reduce this sensitivity to changed conditions. The significance of uncertain conditions varies substantially among WDSs. As a consequence of performance changes that occur when conditions change, mean-case designs generally outperform worst-case designs when the objective is to minimize worst-case adverse effects over a range of conditions. The results of this work can be used to implement more robust designs for CWSs, while reducing computational requirements.
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Acknowledgments
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 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 authors and do no necessarily reflect the views or policies of EPA. Work at Argonne National Laboratory was sponsored by the EPA under interagency agreement through U.S. Department of Energy Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. Because the information is confidential, the authors cannot disclose the identity of the WDSs studied in this paper or any information that could be used to identify them.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
Volume 140 • Issue 10 • October 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 7, 2013
Accepted: Sep 13, 2013
Published online: Sep 21, 2013
Published in print: Oct 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Oct 15, 2014
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