Abstract
The performance of water distribution networks (WDNs) can be quantified by several types of hydraulic measure. In design and operation of a WDN, sufficient consideration should be given to system performance, and it would be inefficient to separately consider individual characteristics of hydraulic measures. Instead, various reliability indices have been developed and utilized to evaluate the performance of WDNs; however, deciding which index to use according to a particular WDN situation has not been investigated in sufficient depth. In this regard, this study analyzes the correlation between representative reliability indices and hydraulic measures to propose the most adequate reliability index according to the desired system performance in various situations. Specifically, six hydraulic measures representing system performance were selected from the viewpoint of redundancy, robustness, and serviceability. In addition, nine indices for estimating system reliability were classified based on theoretical backgrounds such as hydraulic, topological, entropic, and mixed approaches. The correlations between the nine indices and six measures were analyzed using 17 sample hypothetical networks with different layouts, under three water supply scenarios, and the overall evaluation results for each reliability index are presented through multi-criteria decision analysis.
Highlights
The expected performance of an infrastructure system can be interpreted through the concept of “system reliability”, which quantifies marginal capacity to fulfil the users’ requirements
For 17 application networks, a total of 54 correlations were analyzed through the results of nine reliability indices calculated in the base scenario and the results of six hydraulic measures collected in Scenarios 1–3
As all reliability indices and hydraulic measures indicate that the higher the value, the more superior the reliability and performance of the network, it can be concluded that the larger the derived correlation coefficient, the better the index is at reflecting system performance
Summary
The expected performance of an infrastructure system can be interpreted through the concept of “system reliability”, which quantifies marginal capacity to fulfil the users’ requirements. In a water distribution network (WDN), the system reliability indicates the stable performance of supplying required water with adequate service pressure. The specific performance of WDN could be assessed by representative hydraulic measures. Wildavsky [1] defined “resilience”, one of the most important performance parameters of WDNs, as the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest and learning to bounce back. For reliability assessment of WDNs, several studies [5,6,7] compared the performance of different WDNs using simple types of representative hydraulic measure such as average surplus head, minimum surplus head, and supplied demand. Marlim et al [8] divided and formulated the reliability objectives of a WDN’s
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
