Water Supply in Emergency Situations (II)

Here’s my first post about the book. In this post I’ve added a few more quotes from a couple of the last chapters of the book:

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“Due to the high complexity of the [water supply] systems, and the innumerable possible points of contaminant insertion, complete prevention of all possible terror attacks (chemical, biological, or radiological) on modern drinking water supplying systems […] seems to be an impossible goal. For example, in the USA there are about 170,000 water systems, with about 8,100 very large systems that serve 90% of the population who get water from a community water system […] The prevailing approach to the problem of drinking water contamination is based on the implementation of surveillance measures and technologies for “risk reduction” such as improvement of physical security measures of critical assets (high-potential vulnerability to attacks), [and] installation of online contaminant monitoring systems (OCMS) with capabilities to detect and warn in real time on relevant contaminants, as part of standard operating procedures for quality control (QC) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. […] Despite the impressive technical progress in online water monitoring technologies […] detection with complete certainty of pollutants is expensive, and remains problematic.”

“A key component of early warning systems is the availability of a mathematical model for predicting the transport and fate of the spill or contaminant so that downstream utilities can be warned. […] Simulation tools (i.e. well-calibrated hydraulic and water quality models) can be linked to SCADA real-time databases allowing for continuous, high-speed modeling of the pressure, flow, and water quality conditions throughout the water distribution network. Such models provide the operator with computed system status data within the distribution network. These “virtual sensors” complement the measured data. Anomalies between measured and modeled data are automatically observed, and computed values that exceed predetermined alarm thresholds are automatically flagged by the SCADA system.”

“Any given tap receives water, which arrives though a number of pipes in the supply network, the transport route, and ultimately comes from a source […] in order to achieve maximum supply security in case of pipe failures or unusual demand patterns (e.g. fire flows) water supply networks are generally designed as complicated, looped systems, where each tap typically can receive water from several sources and intermediate storage facilities. This means that the water from any given tap can arrive through several different routes and can be a mixture of water from several sources. The routes and sources for a given tap can vary over time […] A model can show: *Which sources (well-fields, reservoirs, and tanks) contribute to the supply of which parts of the city? *Where does the water come from (percentage distribution) at any specific location in the system (any given tap or pipe)? *How long has the water been traveling in the pipe system, before it reaches a specific location?
One way to reduce the risk – and simplify the response to incidents – is by compartmentalizing the water supply system. If each tap receives water from one and only one reservoir pollution of one reservoir will affect one well-defined and relatively smaller part of the city. Compartmentalizing the water supply system will reduce the spreading of toxic substances. On the flip side, it may increase the concentration of the toxic substance. It is also likely to have a negative impact on the supply of water for fire flow and on the robustness of the water supply network in case of failures of pipes or other elements.”

An important point in the context of that part of the coverage is that if you want online (i.e. continuous, all-the-time) monitoring of drinking water, well, that’s going to be expensive regardless of how precisely you’re going to go about doing it. Another related problem is that it’s actually not really a simple matter to figure out what it even makes sense to test for when you’re analyzing the water (you can’t test for ‘everything’ all the time, and so the leading approach in monitoring systems employed today is according to the authors based on the idea of using ‘surrogate parameters’ which may be particularly informative about any significant changes in the quality of the drinking water taking place.

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“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the countries of the South Caucasus gained their independence. However, they faced problems associated with national and transboundary water management. Transboundary water management remains one of the key issues leading to conflict in the region today. The scarcity of water especially in downstream areas is a major problem […] The fresh surface water resources of the South Caucasus mainly consist of runoff from the Kura–Araz River basins. […] Being a water-poor region, water supply over the Azerbaijan Republic territory totals about 100,000 m³/km², which amounts to an average of about 1,000 m³ of water per person per year. Accordingly, Azerbaijan Republic occupies one of the lowest рlaces in the world in water availability. Water resources of the Republic are distributed very irregularly over administrative districts.”

Water provision [in Azerbaijan] […] is carried out by means of active hydrotechnical constructions, which are old-fashioned and many water intake facilities and treatment systems cannot operate during high flooding, water turbidity, and extreme pollution. […] Tap water satisfies [the] needs of only 50% of the population, and some areas experience lack of drinking water. Due to the lack of water supply networks and deteriorated conditions of those existing, about half of the water is lost within the distribution system. […] The sewage system of the city of Baku covers only 70% of its territory and only about half of sewage is treated […] Owing to rapid growth of turbidity of Kura (and its inflows) during high water the water treatment facilities are rendered inoperable thus causing failures in the water supply of the population of the city of Baku. Such situations mainly take place in autumn and spring on the average 3–5 times a year for 1–2 days. In the system of centralized water supply of the city of Baku about 300 emergency cases occur annually […] Practically nobody works with the population to promote efficient water use practices.”