ABSTRACT
The research presented in this chapter aims to assess the potential of water distribution networks to sustain a certain level of failure based on analysis of their operational parameters under regular supply conditions, namely the pressures, flows and head loss distribution. For this purpose, the PDD network diagnostics tool (NDT) developed initially for the connectivity analysis has been expanded by adding three indices proposed to describe the network operation, namely the network power index (NPI), the pressure buffer index (PBI), and the network residence time (NRT). Correlation analyses have been done on the sets of networks studied in Chapter 6, using the same reliability measures, namely the ADFavg, NBI and In. Furthermore, several statistical analyses have been conducted to check the correlations between various pipe properties and the loss of demand after the pipe failure. The conclusions based on the simulation results point fairly good matching between the reliability measures. The pipe correlations of geometric and hydraulic parameters show less consistent patterns. Different network categories have been showing different level of correlations of particular parameters but no consistent conclusions could have been made; the patterns will largely be related to the geometrical properties of pipes and their connectivity with nodes.
