ABSTRACT
The conclusions presented in Chapters 3 to 9 have been reformulated to directly address the research questions raised in Chapter 2. Is the available demand fraction (ADF) true descriptor of network reliability? The ADF is certainly the most transparent index because this is the only value between 0 and 1 that can be directly converted into the loss of demand. Nevertheless, the average value of ADF may hide pipe bursts causing rather significant loss of demand. That is why the only complete picture about the network reliability can be obtained from the hydraulic reliability diagram (HRD). Are the demand-driven based reliability measures, sufficiently accurate? The two reliability measures from the literature used for benchmarking, the resilience index of Todini (Ir), and the network resilience of Prasad and Park (In), have proven to follow the same trend as the indices developed in this research, in the first place the NBI. Nevertheless, the Ir and specifically the In, evaluated some networks with pretty low values, which has been in contradiction with relatively high value of ADFavg for these networks. This leads towards a conclusion that two indices from the literature are, as their formulas also show, indeed mostly sensitive on the node heads and to a lesser degree on the network connectivity. The side effect here is that in the extreme events of pressure loss, both indices may yield arbitrarily high-either even negative value.
