Comparison of Surrogate Measures for the Reliability and Redundancy of Water Distribution Systems

An investigation into the effectiveness of surrogate measures for the hydraulic reliability and/or redundancy of water distribution systems is presented. The measures considered are statistical flow entropy, resilience index, network resilience and surplus power factor. Looped network designs that are maximally noncommittal to the surrogate reliability measures were considered. In other words, the networks were designed by multi-objective evolutionary optimization free of any influence from the surrogate measures. The designs were then assessed using each surrogate measure and two accurate but computationally intensive measures namely hydraulic reliability and pipe-failure tolerance. The results indicate that by utilising statistical flow entropy, the reliability of the network can be reasonably approximated, with substantial savings in computational effort. The results for the other surrogate measures were often inconsistent. Two networks in the literature were considered. One example involved a range of alternative network topologies. In the other example, based on whole-life cost accounting, alternative design and upgrading schemes for a 20-year design horizon were considered. Pressure-dependent hydraulic modelling was used to simulate pipe failures for the reliability calculations.