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Understanding and managing water quality in drinking water distribution system is essential for public health and wellbeing, but is challenging due to the number and complexity of interacting physical, chemical and biological processes occurring within vast, deteriorating pipe networks. In this paper we explore the application of Self Organising Map techniques to derive such understanding from international data sets, demonstrating how multivariate, non-linear techniques can be used to identify relationships that are not discernible using univariate and/or linear analysis methods for drinking water quality. The paper reports on how various microbial parameters correlated with modelled water ages and were influenced by water temperatures in three drinking water distribution systems.

Water discolouration in networks results from increased turbidity due to high levels of suspended particles. Hydraulic incidents such as pipe burst or hydrant use impose extra shear stresses on sediment layers in the network, leading to particle resuspension. The mass balance over a network or parts of the network may be used to analyse the different sources and accumulation processes; this article focuses on the contribution of the “mass in” from the pumping station as particles. Three analysis methods have been developed within the joint research program of the Dutch water companies (BTO-program): the continuous monitoring of turbidity, the Mass Settling Potential Method and the Resuspension Potential Method. The continuous monitoring of turbidity and particle counting enable an analysis of the relative contribution of sources for particles, e.g. corrosion of cast iron. The Mass Settling Potential and Resuspension Potential methods add insight into actual sediment load and actual discolouration risk. Further development of these methods will enhance knowledge of the origin and fate of particles in a network, enabling the formulation of effective measures against discolouration and associated water quality problems.

Spatial and short-term temporal changes in water quality as a result of water age and fluctuating hydraulic conditions were investigated in a drinking water distribution system. Online measurements of total and intracellular adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP), total and intact cell concentrations measured with flow cytometry (FCM), turbidity, and particle counts were performed over five weeks at five subsequent locations of the distribution system. The high number of parallel FCM and ATP measurements revealed the combined effect of water age and final disinfection on spatial changes in microbiology in the system. The results underlined that regular daily dynamics in flow velocities are normal and inevitable in drinking water distribution systems, and significantly impact particle counts and turbidity. However, hydraulic conditions had no detectable impact on the concentration of suspended microbial cells. A weak correlation between flow velocity and ATP concentrations suggests incidental resuspension of particle-bound bacteria, presumably caused by either biofilm detachment or resuspension from sediment when flow velocities increase. The highly dynamic hydraulic conditions highlight the value of online monitoring tools for the meaningful description of short-term dynamics (day-scale) in drinking water distribution systems.

Particulate material accumulates over time as cohesive layers on internal pipeline surfaces in water distribution systems (WDS). When mobilised, this material can cause discolouration. This paper explores factors expected to be involved in this accumulation process. Two complementary machine learning methodologies are applied to significant amounts of real world field data from both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective. First, Kohonen self-organising maps were used for integrative and interpretative multivariate data mining of potential factors affecting accumulation.Second, evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR), a hybrid data-driven technique, was applied that combines genetic algorithms with numerical regression for developing easily interpretable mathematical model expressions. EPR was used to explore producing novel simple expressions to highlight important accumulation factors. Three case studies are presented: UK national and two Dutch local studies. The results highlight bulk water iron concentration, pipe material and looped network areas as key descriptive parameters for the UK study. At the local level, a significantly increased third data set allowed K-fold cross validation. The mean cross validation coefficient of determination was 0.945 for training data and 0.930 for testing data for an equation utilising amount of material mobilised and soil temperature for estimating daily regeneration rate. The approach shows promise for developing transferable expressions usable for pro-active WDS management.

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Drinking water utilities currently rely on a range of microbiological detection techniques to evaluate the quality of their drinking water (DW). However, microbiota profiling using culture-free 16S rRNA gene next-generation sequencing (NGS) provides an opportunity for improved monitoring of the microbial ecology and quality of DW. Here, we evaluated the utility of a previously validated microbiota profiling platform (MYcrobiota) to investigate the microbial dynamics of a full-scale, non-chlorinated DW distribution system (DWDS). In contrast to conventional methods, we observed spatial and temporal bacterial genus changes (expressed as operational taxonomic units - OTUs) within the DWDS. Further, a small subset of bacterial OTUs dominated with abundances that shifted across the length of the DWDS, and were particularly affected by a post-disinfection step. We also found seasonal variation in OTUs within the DWDS and that many OTUs could not be identified, even though MYcrobiota is specifically designed to reduce potential PCR sequencing artefacts. This suggests that our current knowledge about the microbial ecology of DW communities is limited. Our findings demonstrate that the user-friendly MYcrobiota platform facilitates culture-free, standardized microbial dynamics monitoring and has the capacity to facilitate the introduction of microbiota profiling into the management of drinking water quality.