A graph-theoretic framework for assessing the resilience of sectorised water distribution networks

Water utilities face a challenge in maintaining a good quality of service under a wide range of operational management and failure conditions. Tools for assessing the resilience of water distribution networks are therefore essential for both operational and maintenance optimization. In this paper, a novel graph-theoretic approach for the assessment of resilience for large scale water distribution networks is presented. This is of great importance for the management of large scale water distribution systems, most models containing up to hundreds of thousands of pipes and nodes. The proposed framework is mainly based on quantifying the redundancy and capacity of all possible routes from demand nodes to their supply sources. This approach works well with large network sizes since it does not rely on precise hydraulic simulations, which require complex calibration processes and computation, while remaining meaningful from a physical and a topological point of view. The proposal is also tailored for the analysis of sectorised networks through a novel multiscale method for analysing connectivity, which is successfully tested in operational utility network models made of more than 100,000 nodes and 110,000 pipes.