Overall performance of water distribution system: a methodology

The paper proposes a new methodology for analysing and computing the overall performance of water distribution system. The methodology is based on a hierarchical system approach that begins by evaluating a set of three complementary performance indicators, namely, reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability. All the indicators are assessed regarding three aspects, namely, water pressure, available flow, and free residual chlorine concentration, which can be divided into hydraulic and quality aspects. Then, a model is developed that aggregates all the indicators into one index that depicts the overall performance. The aggregation is performed through the integration of the analytical hierarchy process with fuzzy set approach. The first assigns weight for each indicator that reflects its relative importance among the other indicators. The second is a fuzzy building methodology that uses the assigned weight and others external information to harmonize all indicators into a unique platform and allows one to obtain the overall performance.