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A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Water Resources Management, Policy and Governance".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 31782

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. João Filipe Santos

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Guest Editor

Civil and Environmental Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Beja, 7800-309 Beja, Portugal
Interests: advanced topics in water resources and environment; impact assessment; hydrology and water resources
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Dr. Nelson Carriço

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Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal, Barreiro School of Technology, Rua Américo da Silva Marinho, 2839-001 Lavradio, Portugal
Interests: multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA); infrastructure asset management (IAM); hydraulic modeling; digitalization of urban water systems; water and energy efficiencies and circular economy
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues

The year 2015 was a landmark for multilateralism and international policy shaping, with the adoption of several major agreements, one of them were the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 announced at the Summit realized in September. Updating the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the 17 SDGs cover an ambitious range of global topics and include water and sanitation at its core in the new agenda. A dedicated SDG 6 declaring a commitment to “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. According to the UN the SDG6 on water and sanitation provides a tremendous opportunity to accelerate progress on the 2030 Agenda, given the water sector’s central role in human rights, poverty reduction, inequality elimination, peace and justice, and the environment (UN-Water, 2018).

For the achievement of this SDG 6 global targets the development of water supply assessment systems plays an important and crucial role in the sustainability of water resources management.

This Special Issue will focus on highlighting ongoing research investigations and new methodologies in the developing appropriate methods and tools to measure, monitor and improve water supply are of great importance.

Within this framework, the Editors of this Special Issue would like to invite original research contributions that emphasize the following areas:

- Performance assessment systems for regular and reliable information;

- Web based platforms for criteria and metrics of water supply systems performance and dissemination of results for use in decision-making and policy-making;

- Development of performance improvement plans for private and public sectors;

- Assessment frameworks and financial plans for water supply rehabilitation;

- Water governance and regulatory processes regarding the management of water supply systems;

- Risk management concepts in the development of assessment systems in water supply that could innovate in respect to the limitations of current methods and assessment practices;

- Big data for water supply assessment systems.

Submissions of both general methodological contributions as well as case studies of the development of water supply assessment systems in different regions covering a wide range of possible governance types are strongly encouraged.

Prof. Dr. João Filipe Santos
Prof. Dr. Nelson Carriço
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Infrastructure asset management
Performance assessment systems
Innovative techniques on risk assessment
Big data for water supply assessment systems
Incorporation of climate change scenarios in the development of assessment systems

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Published Papers (10 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 3032 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Field Experiment Verification of Theoretical Exponent N1 for FAVAD Method in Defining the Relationship of Pressure and Water Losses

by Igor Dundović and Lidija Tadić

Water 2022, 14(13), 2067; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14132067 - 28 Jun 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2774

Abstract

The current problem of managing water losses in water supply systems relies on engineering predictions of expected outcomes based on pressure manipulations using hydraulic models or other computational methods. The objective of this experiment was to conduct a field test to validate the theoretical N1 exponent of the fixed and variable area discharges (FAVAD) method. By knowing the pipe material and measuring the pressure and minimum night flow (MNF), the N1 exponent can be defined and compared to recommendations in the literature. Field measurements and experiments were performed in a small settlement in Croatia consisting of 278 house connections and 7.4 km of PVC material pipe network. Pressure manipulation was performed on a pressure-reducing valve (PRV). The resulting value of N1 = 1.76 from the experiment agrees with the literature graphs, which indicate a value of N1 between 1.5 and 2.0. Considering the difference between the studied values and the theoretically calculated MNF of 4%, it can be concluded that the implementation of the presented methodology to determine the N1 exponent can be used in practice. This type of field testing is important because such tests are difficult to perform due to the extensive pressure manipulations during the tests, which can affect the consumers and cause disturbances in the water distribution. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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15 pages, 6547 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Study on the Ablation of the Glacier Covered by Mineral Dust in Alpine Regions

by Zhiyi Zhang, Xinyi Xu, Yongze Song and Qiang Zeng

Water 2022, 14(13), 1982; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14131982 - 21 Jun 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1864

Abstract

Glaciers, known as solid reservoirs, are important water supply sources in northwest China. In this paper, mineral dust collected from a Chinese alpine mining area (Beizhan iron mine) and an ice cube (with a 225 cm² section and a volume of 1000 mL) were employed via a delicate physical experiment to study the ablation of glaciers covered by mineral dust in alpine regions. After that, the ablation mechanism was revealed using the energy conservation theory. The main findings are as follows: (1) When the solar radiation intensity is 993 W/m², the glacier ablation rate increases by 13.9% (from 282 to 321.2 mL/h) as the mineral dust coverage rate increases from 0% to 42.7%. (2) When the mineral dust coverage rate remains at 30%, the glacier ablation rate increases by 11.6% (from 291.8 to 325.78 mL/h) as the solar radiation intensity increases from 1007 to 1153 W/m². (3) When the solar radiation intensity and mineral dust coverage rate remain unchanged, the ablation rate of the glacier covered by the mineral dust inversely increases with the dust particle size. The ablation rates of the particle size gradings C, B, and A (the dust particle sizes of gradings A, B, and C in 0.0375–0.075 mm, 0.075–0.125 mm, and 0.125–0.25 mm accounted for 5%:50%:45%, 30%:40%:30%, and 70%:30%:0%, respectively) were 293.4, 301.2, and 305.6 mL /h, respectively, and the corresponding ablation rates increased by 2.7% and 1.5%. (4) The smaller the average particle size of the mineral dust, the greater the contribution to the ablation rate; a 1 °C temperature increase to the glacier ablation rate is equivalent to 29.1%, 33.6%, and 40.6% increases in dust coverage for particle size classes C, B, and A. (5) The mineral dust covering the glacier surface could not only reduce the reflectivity of the glacier surface to solar radiation but could also continuously transfer the absorbed radiant energy and its own chemical energy to the glacier body, accelerating the glacier’s meltwater speed. The findings of this paper can provide the necessary theoretical basis for mineral dust control and glacier water conservation in alpine mining areas. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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15 pages, 15669 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Induced Circulation by Plunging and Submerged Jets in Circular Water Storage Tanks Using CFD

by Nuno M. C. Martins and Dídia I. C. Covas

Water 2022, 14(8), 1277; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14081277 - 14 Apr 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3110

Abstract

Water circulation in storage tanks significantly impacts water quality in distribution networks since old water tends to have low residual chlorine concentrations that are insufficient to neutralize microbial regeneration. Their large capacity and long residence times result in uneven mixing, which can accelerate the disinfectant decay and the formation of potentially carcinogenic disinfection by-products. The phenomenon is strongly related to the tank inflow conditions, since there are no active mixing devices. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the flow dynamics in circular storage tanks using a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model. The main motivation is that the inflow—which mixing processes rely on—strongly influences the circulations. The numerical analysis provided includes a thorough investigation of interest in understanding flow dynamics for two inflow configurations: (i) the plunging jet modelling and comparison with published experimental data and (ii) the submerged jet as an improvement measurement for these storage tanks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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24 pages, 8141 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Lessons Learnt from the Application of MCDA Sorting Methods to Pipe Network Rehabilitation Prioritization

by João Caetano, Nelson Carriço and Dídia Covas

Water 2022, 14(5), 736; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14050736 - 25 Feb 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2167

Abstract

Most water distribution networks were built a few decades ago, showing symptoms of deterioration. Additionally, current renewal rates are insufficient to overcome pipe networks’ continuous ageing process. The development of methodologies for assisting the definition of pipe rehabilitation, including which pipes, and when and what financial amounts to allocate to this activity, are of the utmost importance. These methodologies typically have to attend to several points of view, for which multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) techniques may be used. The current paper demonstrates and discusses the application of two MCDA techniques—the ELECTRE TRI-C and FlowSort—to a real water distribution network. Both techniques allowed assigning every single pipe to a predefined priority category, although the ELECTRE TRI-C proved to be more effective. These approaches imply that the planning of investment needs is carried out based on individual pipes, but these approaches are not consistent with the actual rehabilitation projects. A clustering technique called affinity propagation, together with cost functions, were applied to define and quantify homogeneous rehabilitation units. Even so, the methodology did not prove to be rigorous enough for the selection of pipes to be rehabilitated. On the other hand, it proved effective to estimate annual budgets for rehabilitation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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21 pages, 11837 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Rehabilitation of an Industrial Water Main Using Multicriteria Decision Analysis

by Nelson Carriço, Dídia Covas and Maria do Céu Almeida

Water 2021, 13(22), 3180; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13223180 - 10 Nov 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2115

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the application of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology in a real case study aiming to choose the best rehabilitation intervention of an industrial water main. This methodology is composed of three main stages: problem identification, structuring, and evaluation. Problem structuring, a crucial stage for the outcomes, includes identifying objectives, selecting scenarios within the analysis period, defining problem alternatives, and defining the problematic type. Problem evaluation includes the selection of assessment metrics, selection of the aggregation method, application of the method, and a sensitivity and robustness analysis. Two scenarios, nine assessment metrics, and seven alternatives are established, and two ranking methods (the additive model and ELECTRE III method) are used to compare the alternatives. The results show that the best solution corresponds to building a new pipe and deactivating the existing one, as it significantly reduces the pipe failure risk and O&M costs, whereas the worst solution is always the status quo case, since it is the only alternative that does not improve the system performance, independently of the ranking method and the analyzed scenario. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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15 pages, 4157 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Enhanced Water Age Performance Assessment in Distribution Networks

by Laura Monteiro, Ricardo Algarvio and Dídia Covas

Water 2021, 13(18), 2574; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13182574 - 18 Sep 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4524

Abstract

Water age is frequently used as a surrogate for water quality in distribution networks and is often included in modelling and optimisation studies, though there are no reference values or standard performance functions for assessing the network behaviour regarding water age. This paper presents a novel methodology for obtaining enhanced system-specific water age performance assessment functions, tailored for each distribution network. The methodology is based on the establishment of relationships between the chlorine concentration at the sampling nodes and simulated water age. The proposed methodology is demonstrated through application to two water distribution systems in winter and summer seasons. Obtained results show a major improvement in comparison with those obtained by published performance functions, since the water age limits of the performance functions used herein are tailored to the analysed networks. This demonstrates that the development of network-specific water age performance functions is a powerful tool for more robustly and reliably defining water age goals and evaluating the system behaviour under different operating conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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20 pages, 5865 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatiotemporal Correlation Feature Spaces to Support Anomaly Detection in Water Distribution Networks

by Susana C. Gomes, Susana Vinga and Rui Henriques

Water 2021, 13(18), 2551; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13182551 - 17 Sep 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2918

Abstract

Monitoring disruptions to water distribution dynamics are essential to detect leakages, signal fraudlent and deviant consumptions, amongst other events of interest. State-of-the-art methods to detect anomalous behavior from flowarate and pressure signal show limited degrees of success as they generally neglect the simultaneously rich spatial and temporal content of signals produced by the multiple sensors placed at different locations of a water distribution network (WDN). This work shows that it is possible to (1) describe the dynamics of a WDN through spatiotemporal correlation analysis of pressure and volumetric flowrate sensors, and (2) analyze disruptions on the expected correlation to detect burst leakage dynamics and additional deviant phenomena. Results gathered from Portuguese WDNs reveal that the proposed shift from raw signal views into correlation-based views offers a simplistic and more robust means to handle the irregularity of consumption patterns and the heterogeneity of leakage profiles (both in terms of burst volume and location). We further show that the disruption caused by leakages can be detected shortly after the burst, highlighting the actionability of the proposed correlation-based principles for anomaly detection in heterogeneous and georeferenced time series. The computational approach is provided as an open-source tool available at GitHub. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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16 pages, 4355 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Optimal Number of Pressure Sensors for Real-Time Monitoring of Distribution Networks by Using the Hypervolume Indicator

by Bruno Ferreira, Nelson Carriço and Dídia Covas

Water 2021, 13(16), 2235; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13162235 - 17 Aug 2021

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 2676

Abstract

This article proposes a novel methodology to determine the optimal number of pressure sensors for the real-time monitoring of water distribution networks based on a quality hypervolume indicator. The proposed methodology solves the optimization problem for different numbers of pressure sensors, assesses the gain of installing each set of sensors by means of the hypervolume indicator and determines the optimal number of sensors by the variation of the hypervolume indicator. The methodology was applied to a real case study. Several robustness analyses were carried out. The results demonstrate that the methodology is hardly influenced by the method parameters and that a reasonable estimation of the optimal number of sensors can be easily achieved. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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23 pages, 9933 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Near–Real Time Burst Location and Sizing in Water Distribution Systems Using Artificial Neural Networks

by Miguel Capelo, Bruno Brentan, Laura Monteiro and Dídia Covas

Water 2021, 13(13), 1841; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13131841 - 1 Jul 2021

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4109

Abstract

The current paper proposes a novel methodology for near–real time burst location and sizing in water distribution systems (WDS) by means of Multi–Layer Perceptron (MLP), a class of artificial neural network (ANN). The proposed methodology can be systematized in four steps: (1) construction of the pipe–burst database, (2) problem formulation and ANN architecture definition, (3) ANN training, testing and sensitivity analyses, (4) application based on collected data. A large database needs to be constructed using 24 h pressure–head data collected or numerically generated at different sensor locations during the pipe burst occurrence. The ANN is trained and tested in a real–life network, in Portugal, using artificial data generated by hydraulic extended period simulations. The trained ANN has demonstrated to successfully locate 60–70% of the burst with an accuracy of 100 m and 98% of the burst with an accuracy of 500 m and to determine burst sizes with uncertainties lower than 2 L/s in 90% of tested cases and lower than 0.2 L/s in 70% of the cases. This approach can be used as a daily management tool of water distribution networks (WDN), as long as the ANN is trained with artificial data generated by an accurate and calibrated WDS hydraulic models and/or with reliable pressure–head data collected at different locations of the WDS during the pipe burst occurrence. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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18 pages, 3560 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of Dam Water-Supply Capacity in Korea Using the Water-Shortage Index

by Chulsang Yoo, Changhyun Jun, Juhua Zhu and Wooyoung Na

Water 2021, 13(7), 956; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13070956 - 31 Mar 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3495

Abstract

This study evaluates the dam water-supply capacity in Korea using the water shortage index. The water-shortage index (SI) and generalized water-shortage index (GSI) used in this study are evaluated and modified slightly by considering both the damage cost due to water-supply failure and the construction cost of water-supply systems in Korea. The modified indices are then applied for performance evaluation of 16 multipurpose dams in Korea, whose results are evaluated using different units: each dam, each river basin, and all dams. In the analysis of the dam level and basin level, water-supply problems are detected in several dams and in some river basins. However, the SI and GSI estimated for all dams are found to be lower than 1. This result indicates that, even though the total amount of storage capacity is enough to satisfy the design supply, water resources are not well spatially distributed in Korea. It is also found that the modified indices are valid to describe the performance of each dam in water deficient regions during occurrence years of major droughts. In conclusion, the SI and GSI can offer alternative ways of evaluating dam water supply under different environmental conditions and potentially help determine optimal water-storage capacity of dams. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water Supply Assessment Systems Developing)

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