Identifications of optimal monitoring locations to detect accidental contaminations

Abstract

Water quality may get deteriorated in the distribution network due to natural, man-made, and/or accidental reasons. In order to ensure safe water delivery to the consumers, water quality monitoring in a distribution system is essential. In order to obtain reliable water quality information, monitoring would be required at all nodes of a given distribution system, which is practically may not be infeasible due to economic and time constraints. Thus, it is desired to design a monitoring network for specific levels of service and reliability. The level of service can be defined in terms of the contaminated water consumed or the time lapse between the entry and detection of external contaminants. These service levels are termed as the "volume consumption level of service" and "T hour level of service" respectively. The monitoring network can be identified such that the required level of service can be achieved with minimum number of monitoring locations. In this study, a methodology for identifying the optimal monitoring locations has been suggested using a desired level of service. The developed methodology has been applied to an urban water distribution network to identify the source of accidental contamination. This methodology can be useful to give an alarm signal within a level of service for a potential contamination in a water distribution system. © ASCE 2012.