Equity in water supply in intermittent water distribution networks

Equity in water supply is one of the major problems faced in intermittent water distribution systems. A new index uniformity coefficient' is introduced to measure the equity in distribution of water within the network, which may be useful for performance evaluation of water distribution networks (WDNs). An iterative head-driven analysis technique is developed to compute the uniformity coefficient of a network. The effect of various design parameters of WDN on the uniform coefficient is studied. The results indicate that equity in water supply is significantly affected by the location of the tank and layout of the network. The equity in water supply can be improved in an existing network by staggered supply.