A Study on the Technical Dimension of the Water Supply’s Resilience to Disaster

Dr. Behrooz Balaei and colleagues’ study investigated the technical characteristics of water supply that affect its resilience against disasters.

Failure to meet the required functionality will affect residents and critical users, as well as services like health, education, fire services, and other organizations needed for a society to function.

The researchers focus on identifying technical factors such as vulnerability, pipe redundancy, and criticality to measure water system robustness and, subsequently, resilience.

These factors were gathered through a comprehensive literature review and verified by water engineers and resilience experts through interviews.

The Water Supply Comprehensive Aggregated Resilience Measure (CARE) model identifies factors affecting water supply resilience and ultimately measures water supply robustness.

Vulnerability and criticality harm the water system’s resilience, while redundancy has a positive impact. In other words, the higher the vulnerability or criticality of a water supply system asset, the lower the network’s resilience.

These factors were then used in a hypothetical earthquake scenario in Pukerua Bay (Wellington, New Zealand) to measure the robustness of its water system.

The result shows that Pukerua Bay’s water networks lack robustness in three general areas. The study also recommends measures to increase Pukerua Bay’s water supply robustness.

Many applications of the model were produced in the study.

Local authorities can use it to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the system and optimise investments.

The model can also be applied to other disasters, such as climate hazards, that could impact the water system’s vulnerability.

Read the entire study by CLICKING the link in the Citation below.

PHOTO CREDIT: Pukerua Bay, looking west By Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, Link