Water Distribution System Reliability Based on Minimum Cut – Set Approach and the Hydraulic Availability

Reliability analysis of water distribution systems is a complex task, as it requires both definition and calculation of several reliability measures. In this paper, a methodology for evaluating water distribution system reliability is developed and demonstrated on a simple water distribution network based on the minimum cut-set approach. In general, the definition of the minimum cut-set can arise either from the mechanical reliability or from the concept of hydraulic reliability. In the case of mechanical reliability, a new method based on graph theory is developed, in order to determine the minimum cut-set. This method is based on the counting of paths between nodes. Furthermore, the general concept of reliability is proposed, to include apart from the mechanical reliability, more generally, the pressure availability at nodes as a main hydraulic property. Based on the pressure availability, the sense of hydraulic availability can be expressed as a fuzzy set, while the combination of the water unavailability of the nodes can be achieved by using fuzzy averaging aggregator. Finally, an overall reliability index is proposed based on both the hydraulic and the mechanical reliability. An illustrative example is developed to indicate the methodology.