Fuzzy Modeling of Urban Water Supply Crisis

Abstract

The chaotic growth of cities results in numerous problems related to public health and urban environment. One of these problems is the urban water supply system crisis. This research aims to develop a mathematical model for urban water supply crises (UWC) able to deal with the ambiguity of the real available data. The applied methodology comprises the following steps: (i) identifying the influencing factors in UWC; (ii) proposing a conceptual model for the description of UWC; (iii) collecting and simulating the necessary and available data; (iv) optimizing the conceptual model parameters; and (v) verifying the proposed model performance. The results indicate that there are many influencing factors in UWC. The model developed comprises two parts or two sub-models. The first sub-model explains water consumption, and the second sub-model explains water availability. In the first sub-model, the functions are related to the factors that influence water consumption. In the second sub-model, the functions are related to the factors that influence the availability of water. This research also aims to analyze the possibility of applying Fuzzy Logic to deal with the ambiguity of real data. It was concluded that, with the proposed model, the UWC was modeled appropriately. The model proposed can help to predict the impact of actions such as reducing losses, reducing pressure on the water supply network and intermittent supply on the intensity of water crisis cases in cities.