Reliability analysis of water distribution systems using graph decomposition

Abstract

Water supply utilities are increasingly being confronted with growing maintenance requirements in order to provide a reliable and cost efficient operation of the water distribution system in order to deliver high standard drinking water. One specific challenge is to find a satisfactory compromise between the contradictory objectives of saving investment cost and meeting the increasing expectations of customers. A valuable tool for the planner is reliability analysis of the system that for instance provides information about the importance of each particular pipe in determining the total reliability of the system. This information can be used to decide which pipes should be replaced next or potentially duplicated to reduce the risk of system isolation. Since structural (topological) reliability only considers the connectivity of the network a new approach for the calculation of structural hydraulic reliability is presented in this paper. The algorithmic implementation is based on a decomposition method of the network graph that greatly enhances both the calculation of pure structural reliability as well as structural hydraulic reliability. © 2009 ASCE.