Minimizing the Consequences of Intentional Attack on Water Infrastructure

Abstract

Since September 11, 2001, protecting the nation's water infrastructure and improving water network resiliency have become priorities in the water industry. In this work, we develop methods to mitigate the consequences of water shortage resulting from destruction of facilities in water networks. These methods integrate search techniques, such as branch‐and‐bound and genetic algorithms, with a hydraulic solver to check demand feasibilities across a residual water network. The objective is to identify a feasible customer demand pattern that minimizes the consequences of water shortage in the downgraded network. We present a mathematical model of the problem addressed along with an exact solution methodology and several heuristics. We apply these methodologies to three water networks ranging in size from approximately 10–700 nodes and compare the solution quality and computational efficiency.

Mitigating shortage and distribution costs in damaged water networks

“…Although our work is similar to Jeong et al [21] since we also seek to mitigate demand shortages by re-configuring a residual water network, it differs in that [21] does not consider the costs required to address demand not satisfied by the residual network. The work in this paper assumes that demand not met by a pressurized residual network is mitigated by truck delivery from pressurized to unpressurized demand areas.…”

“…Additional discussions are provided by Jeong et al [20,21] and Qiao et al [32], and an extensive review up to 2006 is provided in Qiao et al [31]. For a more general review of quantitative disaster planning models, the reader is referred to Ref.…”

“…Neither model considers the hydraulic performance of the residual distribution network. Jeong et al [21] consider the problem of re-configuring a damaged water network to optimally mitigate shortage consequences. These methods determine the set of demand nodes to pressurize and the level of demand to meet at each node in order to configure a hydraulically feasible residual network that minimizes water shortage costs.…”

Infrastructure Management Methodologies in Risk Situations

“…for the robust management of WSSs, Jeong et al [28] propose a mathematical model capable of identifying a WSS's vulnerabilities, the optimal allocation of available security resources and the reduction of the consequences of pre-planned terrorist attacks. The authors describe a model to control, or determine a suitable way to operate, a WSS damaged by terrorist attack (XIII).…”

Robust optimization methodologies for water supply systems design

“…Stochastic optimization and robust optimization (RO) appear to be promising techniques to solve these problems: the review by Mulvey et al (1995) examines this area and describes some practical applications. RO has already been applied to WSS: Babayan et al (2007), Jeong et al (2006), Cunha and Sousa (2010), Carr et al (2006) and Giustolisi et al (2009) present a number of robust optimization models.…”