An Effective and Efficient Method for Identification of Contamination Sources in Water Distribution Systems Based on Manual Grab‐Sampling

Abstract

Most of contamination source localization methods for water distribution systems (WDSs) assumes the availability of accurate water quality models and multi-parameter online sensors, which are often out of reach of many water utilities. To address this, a novel manual grab-sampling method (MGSM) is developed to effectively and efficiently locate continuous contamination sources in a WDS using a dynamic and cyclical sampling strategy. The grab samples are collected at a prespecified number of hydrants by the corresponding teams followed by laboratory tests. The MGSM optimizes the sampling plan at each cycle by making the probability of contamination source(s) in each sub-network as equal as possible, where sub-networks are determined by the selected hydrants and current flow pipe directions. The CS's size is reduced at each cycle by exploting sample testing results obtained in the previous cycle until there are no further hydrants to sample from. Two realworld WDSs are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MGSM. The results obtained show that the MGSM can significantly reduce the spatial range of the CS (to about 5% of the entire WDS) for a range of scenarios including multiple contamination sources and pipe flow direction changes. We found that an optimal number of sampling teams exists for a given WDS, representing a balanced trade-off between detection efficiency and sampling/testing budgets. Due to its relative simplicity the proposed MGSM can be used in engineering practice straightaway and it represents a viable alternative to the methods associated with water quality models and sensors.

Comment on "An Effective and Efficient Method for Identification of Contamination Sources in Water Distribution Systems Based on Manual Grab-Sampling" by Ji et al.

“…The authors Ji et al (2022) presented a method for identifying continuous contamination sources in water distribution networks. Their proposed Manual Grab-Sampling Method (MGSM) can be optimized by hydraulic modeling and carried out by field crews.…”