Failure Analysis of the Water Supply Network in the Aspect of Climate Changes on the Example of the Central and Eastern Europe Region

Abstract

The consequences of climate changes are felt by society every day. A sudden increase or decrease in air temperature, increasingly frequent, extreme weather phenomena can cause enormous economic damage to countries and cities. The occurrence of random weather phenomena and their negative impact on technical infrastructure nowadays are the basic problem related to ensuring the safety of the functioning of each system. Climate changes and significant air temperature amplitudes have a direct impact on the functioning of the critical infrastructure of cities, which includes collective water supply systems (CWSS). The paper presents the impact of climate change on the failure of a water supply network. Correlation between failure rate and air temperature was determined. This was used to determine the number of failures for the near 2036–2050 and distant 2086–2100 future in terms of climate change (temperature increase). The results confirm the thesis known from the literature that the failure rate decreases as the temperature increases. For forecasted periods as a result of temperature rise due to climate change, the reduction of the number of water pipe failures is expected in the range of 1.22% to 2.35% for the 2036–2050 period and from 2.96% to 8.66% for the 2086–2100 period, depending on the development of Representative CO2 Concentration Scenarios (RCP). The decrease in the total number of failures will have an impact on the increase in the reliability and safety of water supply to consumers.

Analysis of the Negative Daily Temperatures Influence on the Failure Rate of the Water Supply Network

“…Research indicates that bigger failure frequency of water supply networks is observed in cold periods due to ground freezing, and in hot and dry periods due to increased water consumption, soil shrinkage, and ground settlements [11,17,18,[20][21][22][23]. The strongest relationships between the values of failure rate were observed for the factor associated with daily temperature [11,[16][17][18]24]. As the temperature drops, an increase in the failure rate values of the water supply network is observed.…”

“…Higher failure rates are observed in pipes with high pressure or pipes exposed to big pressure fluctuations [18,19]. There have also been several studies on the impact of climate change on the failure rate of the water supply network [16,18,20,21,23,24,26,27]. They indicate that the biggest threat to the functioning of water supply networks will be changes related to the increase in temperature, intensifying hot periods, and drought [18,21,23].…”

“…The increase in failure rate may occur as a result of the increased demand for water in these periods and, above all, as a result of soil drying out and its shrinkage and settlement [16][17][18]20,21,23,27]. On the other hand, depending on the direction of climate change, extreme weather phenomena, severe storms, long-term severe frosts may be observed, which have an equally negative impact on the reliability of the water supply network, causing increase of the failure rate values [16,18,23,24].…”

A Case Study of the Retention Efficiency of a Traditional and Innovative Drainage System

“…A significant improvement in the hydraulic efficiency of traditional drainage systems was obtained as a result of the use of an innovative solution [70], whose idea resulted in the intentional installation of damming partitions across the direction of stormwater flow in gravity conduits of existing or planned drainage systems ( Figure 3). According to the features of the invention [70], the damming partition has an outflow orifice (4) in the bottom part, and the upper edge of the partition is a typical frontal overflow (2). For the analysis of the research on the hydraulic processes, an outflow orifice (4) with a circular cross-section was adopted, which was mapped in the SWMM program using the Orifice link function.…”

“…Due to the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, climate changes cause significant transformations in the characteristics of extreme weather phenomena [1,2] manifested by an increase in the incidence of short-term torrential rainfall [3,4]. This implies a more frequent incidence of local urban floods, whose range shows great variability due to natural and human impacts, with particularly severe adverse effects in high-density urban catchments and a significant proportion of impervious surfaces [5][6][7].…”