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Water distribution systems (WDSs) are considered inherently vulnerable to intentional and accidental contamination. The installation of a water quality sensor system (WQSS) represents a valid strategy for securing WDSs against contamination. This paper proposes a novel topological-based methodological approach for defining a suitable WQSS, by also addressing both the computational intractability of the problem as the size of the WDS increases and the assumption that sensors are wrongly modelled and positioned on WDS nodes, rather than along system pipes. The method is tested on the WDS of Parete (Italy) and the results demonstrate the significant detection efficiency of the defined WQSS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entropy and resilience metrics are proposed as indices to measure the robustness of water distribution networks (WDN) regarding pipe failures and permanent district metering areas (DMAs). Whereas pipe failures represent a temporary disruption of some pipes of WDN (i.e., pipe restoration or replacement), the creation of DMAs involves a permanent alteration closing multiple pipes simultaneously. Although entropy and resilience provide different information about network behavior, they are often used for the same purpose: cost-based multi-objective optimal network design techniques. However, the two metrics were compared with other commonly used hydraulic performance indicators to determine which of them could be better used as surrogate indices for water network robustness. For this purpose, the effects on entropy and resilience due to two different scenarios (pipe failures and permanent DMAs) were evaluated for a medium-sized water distribution network in southern Italy. The hydraulic simulations and water network partitioning were performed with a pressure-driven approach using SWANP 4.0 software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design and management of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) have been, so far, mainly based only on complying a fixed dilution rate of wastewater in stormwater during rain events. This poses serious environmental issues, since the definition of the acceptable dilution does not consider the characteristics of the upstream urban catchment, nor the climatic features, nor those of the receiving water body. Overflows are usually designed for activation when the mixed discharge reaches about five-times the mean wastewater discharge (though it may vary, depending on country regulations), the latter being the mean dry weather wastewater discharge. Accordingly, recent regulations started enforcing limits also on the frequency of overflows. Overflow activation frequency and discharged volumes of pollutants may depend on the upstream catchment features as well as on the precipitation regime. The great variability in these factors could make the impact on the receiving water body of similarly designed overflows quite different. In this study, the behavior of a CSO placed at the outlet of urban catchments with the same size but different characteristics was simulated with SWMM. The considered hydrological parameters were catchment imperviousness, width and slope, Manning coefficient and depression storage. Served population characteristics affecting the combined sewer hydraulic regime were studied by changing the population density and the mean wastewater discharge per capita. After defining realistic ranges for each parameter, the time series of discharged overflows were calculated for all the combinations of the variable catchment parameters, corresponding to 20-year-long precipitation series from a single rain gauge. The obtained results, although preliminary, indicate that CSOs' impact on the receiving water body strongly depends on the characteristics of the upstream urban catchment. Therefore, such characteristics should be considered in CSO design and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]