Beyond trial and error: improving the management of intermittently-operated water distribution networks

安全的自来水很容易被认为是理所当然的。然而，密歇根州的弗林特和安大略省的沃克顿指出，不安全和不可靠的自来水造成了毁灭性的后果。拟议的研究计划的长期愿景是通过创造更好的管道供水网络管理方法来提高管道供水的安全性、可靠性和公平性。*这项研究将从最不可靠的供水网络开始：这些网络并不总是充满压力水。例如，在印度，公用事业公司平均每天只有四个小时的供水时间！在全球范围内，这种间歇性供水为10亿人(21%的自来水用户)提供服务，每年造成1700万人感染。*自来水网络在间歇运行时表现不同。间歇性操作导致管道频繁排水和重新灌水，间歇性操作使一些客户无法获得足够的水。这些差异使管理间歇性供水变得困难，并限制了为管理连续运行的网络而设计的工具的有用性。因此，大多数公用事业公司通过反复试验来管理断断续续的供水。但是，10亿人的供水不应该靠试错来管理。因此，提出了三个短期目标：*第一，增加使用模型(而不是试错法)管理间歇性系统的水务公司的百分比。现有的间歇性供水学术模型具有帮助管理系统的潜力，但尚未被公用事业公司使用。拟议的工作将帮助公用事业公司为其网络选择和使用最合适的模型。*第二，使公用事业公司能够间歇性地向客户供应类似的水量。使用学术模型来确定客户在间歇性系统中的用水量，需要花费高昂的成本来收集该系统中每条管道的细节。相反，这项工作将创建一个更简单的模型，说明水在间歇性系统中是如何公平分配的。更简单的模型不需要详细的管道信息，而且公用事业公司使用起来更便宜。*第三，减少水管爆裂和管网空气滞留造成的能源浪费。向水管中注入水会使空气滞留，这会导致压力峰值，并阻止连续和间歇运行的管网中的水流。现有的水管中的空气模型只适用于简单的网络。这项工作将在公用事业规模的网络中创建第一个滞留空气模型。*影响：这项研究将提高我们对空气和水如何在管道中流动的理解，并使自来水公司能够提高其效率和可靠性。10亿人将受益于间歇性供水可靠性的提高。此外，加拿大的水务部门将受益于更好的管理滞留空气的方法，以及具有保持我们的管道水安全可靠所需的实践和理论技能的HQP。

Safe tap water is easily taken for granted. Yet Flint, Michigan and Walkerton, Ontario point to the devastating consequences of unsafe and unreliable piped water. The long-term vision of the proposed research program is to improve piped water's safety, reliability, and equity by creating better ways of managing piped water networks. *** The research will begin by focusing on the least reliable water networks: networks that are not always filled with pressurized water. In India, for example, utilities supply water for an average of only four hours per day! Globally, such intermittent water supplies serve one billion people (21% of piped water users) and cause 17 million infections annually.*** Piped water networks behave differently when they operate intermittently. Intermittent operations cause pipes to drain and refill frequently and intermittent operations prevent some customers from getting enough water. These differences make managing intermittent water supplies difficult and limit the usefulness of tools designed for managing continuously-operated networks. Accordingly, most utilities manage intermittent water supplies through trial and error. But the water supplies of one billion people should not be managed by trial and error. Three short-term objectives are, therefore, proposed:*** First, increase the percent of water utilities that use models (instead of trial and error) to manage intermittent systems. Existing academic models of intermittent water supplies have the potential to help manage systems, yet are unused by utilities. The proposed work will help utilities choose and use the most appropriate model for their network.*** Second, enable utilities to intermittently supply customers with similar volumes of water. Determining the volume of water that a customer gets in an intermittent system with academic models requires expensive-to-gather details about each pipe in that system. Instead, this work will create a simpler model of how equitably water is distributed within an intermittent system. The simpler model will not require detailed pipe information and will be cheaper for utilities to use. *** Third, reduce the burst pipes and wasted energy caused by air trapped in water networks. Filling water pipes can trap pockets of air, which can cause pressure spikes and block the flow of water in continuously- and intermittently-operated networks. Existing models of air in water pipes only work for simple networks. This work will create the first model of trapped air in a utility-sized network. *** Impact: This research will improve our understanding of how air and water flow through pipes and allow water utilities to increase their efficiency and reliability. One billion people stand to benefit from the increased reliability of intermittent water supplies. Moreover, Canada's water sector will benefit from better ways of managing trapped air and from HQP with the practical and theoretical skills needed to keep our piped water safe and reliable.