Performance Measurement of Water Distribution Systems (WDS). A Critical and Constructive Appraisal of the State-of-the-art

Water supply and distribution infrastructures are vital for current life. They have a significant role in public health, providing safe water for drinking and human consumption as well as for essential non-potable uses such as fire fighting. These diverse objectives create challenges for everyone who must address in some way the actual performance of the system. This research critically evaluates all common objectives of conventional design approaches and evaluates the advantages and drawbacks of various performance measures. New ideas for a more realistic and comprehensive approach to the design, operation assessment of WDS are proposed. A new approach, called a Risk-based Performance Assessment, for hydraulic performance evaluation is tentatively proposed. It is based on integration of reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability as three basic operational indices in the operation of WDS. Furthermore, the Total Life-cycle Cost evaluation approach is tentatively proposed based on considering all major costs of a WDS.