Full Description

The pathways through which water quality can be compromised in the distribution system may beclassified into five major categories: intrusion of contaminants into the distribution system; regrowth ofbacteria in pipes and storage tanks; water treatment failure; leaching of chemicals or corrosion productsfrom system components (pipes, storage tanks, liners, etc.); and, permeation of organic compounds throughplastic pipe and pipe components in the system. The characterization and quantification of these risk factorsis complex and highly uncertain. The current inability to precisely quantify these risks may require the usageof a quantitative-qualitative framework.In this paper a framework for aggregative risk analysis is proposed for water quality failure in thedistribution system. Each basic risk item is expressed by fuzzy numbers, which are derived from the productof the likelihood of a failure event and its consequence. The fuzzy numbers capture vagueness inherent in thequalitative (linguistic) definitions. A multi-stage hierarchical model for water quality failure is developed. Ananalytic hierarchy process is used for estimating the weighting scheme for grouping risk items. Theframework is demonstrated with a simplified structure of risk hierarchies for water quality in distributionsystems. Includes 11 references, tables, figures.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 06/15/2003 Number of Pages: 11File Size: 1 file , 370 KB