Citation:

Hogge, J., K. Klise, D. Hart, AND T. Haxton. Geospatial capabilities to couple hazard and social vulnerability data in water distribution criticality analysis. JOURNAL OF WATER RESOURCES PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT. American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Reston, VA, 151(2):05024016-1-11, (2024). https://doi.org/10.1061/JWRMD5.WRENG-6582

Impact/Purpose:

Drinking water systems face multiple challenges, including aging infrastructure, water quality concerns, uncertainty in supply and demand, natural disasters, environmental emergencies, and terrorist attacks. All of these have the potential to disrupt a large portion of a water system causing damage to infrastructure and outages to customers. Increasing resilience to these types of hazards is essential to improving water security. The Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) is a Python package allowing for end-to-end evaluation of drinking water infrastructure resilience to disasters. The softwareimproves upon EPANET's capabilities by fully integrating hydraulic and water quality simulation, damage estimates and response actions, and resilience metrics into a single platform. This tool is important for drinking water systems around the world who want to better understand how their water systems can withstand natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, and power outages. This paper is a case-study application of WNTR to a drinking water utility in Pennsylvania. WNTR was used to analyze the resilience of the system to pipe breaks associated with landslide zones and in difficult to repair areas, such as the city steps. In addition, the analysis incorporated a social vulnerability index to identify areas in the water distribution system that could improve equitable resilience. The paper highlights the new geospatial capabilities that were added to WNTR. This paper provides examples of how WNTR can be used by researchers, consultants, and drinking water utilities to gain valuable information about distribution systems and their resilience to a range of disasters or disruptions.

Description:

A resilience analysis of a water distribution system is greatly enhanced by the integration of up-to-date geospatial data describing the water system, hazards, and surrounding community. The Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR), an open-source Python package designed to simulate and analyze the resilience of water distribution systems, was recently updated to incorporate geographic information system (GIS) data into the resilience analysis. This paper describes the GIS capabilities and includes a case study using the drinking water distribution system model for a large city in Pennsylvania. The case study focuses on potential pipe damage from landslides and on pipes that are particularly difficult to repair. The analysis couples data on hazards, social vulnerability, and the location of emergency services to identify and prioritize high-impact critical infrastructure for mitigation. Results demonstrate that pipes can be prioritized for mitigation based on water shortage and vulnerable populations that are affected. The methods can be adopted for general use and are available as part of the WNTR software.

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