AWWA IMTECH54040

Water utility personnel who manage drinking water distribution systems face manychallenges. They balance operation and maintenance tasks under cost, reliability, andregulatory constraints. Their tasks are complicated by the relative age of the drinkingwater distributions systems. Aging systems are of concern due to unaccounted for water,increased incidence of breakage, and the potential for water quality degradation due tointrusion events. A unified approach is proposed that addresses the susceptibility ofdrinking water distribution systems to intrusion events. The approach employsinfrastructure information, a hydraulic model, and demographic data. These data aremanaged within a geographic information system (GIS). The framework systematicallyidentifies pipe segments susceptible to microbial intrusions and prioritizes these segmentsfor attention based on knowledge about nearby sensitive populations. The results of thedecision framework may support utility capital improvement plans, infrastructuremaintenance, and can be used as a basis for sampling regulatory schemes. Includes 21 references, tables, figures.