Approaches and measures for the Resilience of Drinking Water Supply Systems

This article is a review on the resilience of drinking water supply systems as studied in various contexts. Different interpretations of the term resilience translate into different quantification measures and metrics. Studies that were based on recovery, necessary systems' properties for resistance to supply and demand stresses, engineering resilience, ecological resilience, time -dependent status changes, magnitude of disturbance metrics (hazard based definitions), adaptability, transformability, key performance thresholds, and other definitions are reviewed. These were categorised for the first time into approaches to facilitate future qualitative and quantitative studies that aim to measure resilience. The resulted categories include failure followed by functional state, duration of unsatisfactory versus functional states, coverage of services (ability to supply, access, maintaining water service), dynamic representation of the system's performance, recovery-related resilience, and functions of other features or indicators. Through the analysis, this work provides a useful guide to academics, analysts and practitioners for selecting the most appropriate approach depending on the studied problem, the external threat(s), and the data availability.