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都指出了不安全和不可靠的自来水带来的毁灭性后果。拟议的研究计划的长期愿景是通过创造更好的管理自来水网络的方法来提高自来水的安全性、可靠性和公平性。这项研究将从最不可靠的供水网络开始：不总是充满加压水的供水网络。例如，在印度，公用事业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（占管道用水用户的21%）提供服务，每年造成1700万例感染。自来水管网在间歇运行时表现不同。间歇运行导致管道频繁排水和补水，间歇运行使一些客户无法获得足够的水。这些差异使得管理间歇性供水变得困难，并限制了为管理连续运行的管网而设计的工具的实用性。因此，大多数公用事业公司通过反复试验来管理间歇性供水。但是，10亿人的水供应不应该通过试错来管理。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）来管理间歇性系统的水务公司的比例。现有的间歇性供水的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。建议的工作将有助于公用事业选择和使用最适合其网络的模型。***第二，使公用事业公司能够间歇性地向客户提供相同容量的水。用学术模型来确定客户在间歇式系统中的水量，需要收集系统中每根管道的详细信息，成本高昂。相反，这项工作将创建一个更简单的模型，说明如何在间歇性系统中公平分配水。更简单的模型不需要详细的管道信息，对公用事业公司来说也更便宜。***第三，减少水管爆裂和因空气困在水管内而造成的能源浪费。注满水管可能会困住空气，从而导致压力峰值，并阻碍连续或间歇运行的管网中的水流。现有的水管空气模型只适用于简单的管网。这项工作将创建第一个在公用事业规模的网络中被困空气的模型。***影响：这项研究将提高我们对空气和水如何流经管道的理解，并使水务公司提高效率和可靠性。10亿人将从间歇性供水的可靠性提高中受益。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HQP所需要的实践和理论技能，以保持我们的管道水安全和可靠。

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.