Real-time contamination zoning in water distribution networks for contamination emergencies: a case study

Contamination of urban water distribution systems (WDS) is a critical issue due to the number of victims that might be impacted in a short period of time. Any effective rapid emergency response plan for reducing the number of sick people or deaths among those drinking the polluted water requires a reliable forecast of the water contamination zoning map (CZM). The water CZM is a visual representation of the spread of contamination at the time of contamination detection. This study presents a novel methodology based on the rough set theory (RST) for real-time forecasting of the CZM caused by simultaneous multi-point contamination injection in WDS. Our proposed methodology consists of (i) a Monte Carlo simulation model to capture the uncertainties in a multi-point deliberate contamination, (ii) a numerical simulation model for simulating pipe flow, and (iii) a rough set-based technique for real-time CZM for a WDS equipped with a set of monitoring stations. The proposed methodology can be used for any type of random contamination of WDSs as well as emergencies in deliberate contamination of water distribution networks.