Protection of the water system is paramount due to the negative consequences of contaminated water on the public health. Water resources are one of the critical infrastructures that must be preserved from deliberate and accidental attacks. Water qualities are examined at the treatment plant. However, its quality can substantially be contaminated during transportation from the plant to the consumers' taps. Contamination in water distribution networks (WDNs) is a danger that can have severe consequences on public health as well as an economic and social instability. Water distribution networks are immensely susceptible to deliberate or accidental attacks due to the complex nature of the system. Hence, contamination source identification (CSI) is a topical issue in water distribution systems that require immediate attention of researchers in order to protect mankind from the adverse effect of consuming contaminated water. Usually, a contaminant event can be detected by the water quality monitoring sensors or the contaminant warning system (CWS) installed on the network. Nevertheless, how to derive the source of the contamination from the collected information is a difficult task that must be tackled in order to evaluate the spread of the contamination and for immediate remedial strategies. In the past two decades, considerable efforts and advancement have been made by researchers applying various techniques in order to locate the source of the contamination in WDNs. Each of the techniques has certain limitations and applicability as reported in the literature. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the existing techniques with emphasis on their importance and technical challenges. Despite a series of investigations in this domain, the field is yet to be unified. Hence, open research areas are still available to explore. Consequently, improvement on the existing techniques is necessary and hereby suggested. More importantly, practical application of these techniques offer a major research gap that must be addressed.
Water contamination can result in serious health complications and gross socioeconomic implications. Therefore, identifying the source of contamination is of great concern to researchers and water operators, particularly, to avert the unfavorable consequences that can ensue from consuming contaminated water. As part of the effort to address this challenge, this present study proposes a novel contaminant distribution model for water supply systems. The concept of superposing the contaminant over the hydraulic analysis was used to develop the proposed model. Four water sample networks were used to test the performance of the proposed model. The results obtained displayed the contaminant distributions across the water network at a limited computational time. Apart from being the first in this domain, the significant reduction of computational time achieved by the proposed model is a major contribution to the field.
The complexity of a water distribution network (WDN) allows human imposition where accidental or intentional attack is possible. These attacks sometimes result in the contamination of water that has been treated at the treatment plant, and can eventually, be consumed by the society. However, the use of contaminated water has gross negative public health and socioeconomic implications on the society. Technically, being able to identify the source of contamination is particularly important for decision makers, so as to take immediate control strategies in order to minimize the consequences that can ensue from the use of contaminated water. There are two types of WDN analysis problem, which are: the steady state and the transient state conditions. In order to detect the continuous contamination that may be present in a WDN, this study considered a steady state condition. In this work, an approach for estimating the sources of contamination and the magnitude of concentration of the contaminant is proposed. Given a set of measurements, and by applying superposition technique, a model that embeds and relates the contaminant distribution to a set of given measurement in order to estimate the sources of contamination is formulated and, algorithm for solving it, is developed. The application of the proposed model is demonstrated on a water network with multiple injection contamination sources. The results of the estimated corresponding coefficient of determination for three cases are estimated (Case 1: 0.99894, Case 2: 0.99937 and Case 3 is 0.99974) while the corresponding root mean square were also obtained (Case 1: 0.000364, Case 2: 0.000351, Case 3: 0.000299) for a noise level of (5%). The same parameters were also obtained at a noise level of (10%). The obtained results verified the feasibility of the proposed novel approach, which can be applied to a larger water distribution network.
Safeguarding of water distribution networks is gaining attention due to the socioeconomic implication of consuming contaminated water. An installation of water quality sensors has been recognised as one of the measures to minimise the distress. Notably, the procurement and maintenance cost of the water quality sensors have restrained the number of sensors to deploy across the network. This constraint means that the sensor placement strategy has to receive significant consideration. Over the years, researchers have proposed several techniques to handle the challenge. Each of the techniques has its shortcomings which must be addressed. This study presents a critical review of the sensor placement strategies in a water distribution network. The review results expressed the technical challenges, and proposed feasible solutions. The future research directions are also provided.
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