Drinking Water Demand under Stressed Conditions; Quantification with SIMDEUM

“Drinking water companies want to supply 100% of drinking water demand, also under stressed situations such as limited pressure due to e.g. pipe breaks or a large scale electricity black-out. Therefore drinking water systems are designed for robustness, e.g. by using large pipe diameters in a looped system and by having back-up generators. One of the important unknowns in the design is how drinking water demand varies under these conditions from the regular demand.
The common approach in taking into account the relationship between pressure and demand is to find a numerical relationship between measured pressure and supplied water. However, these relationships differ per location and it is not to determine the relationship for a yet to be designed network. Our approach is to use information on how water related behaviour changes in various scenarios. For example, when the pressure is too low to supply the top floor of a typical Dutch home where the hot water boiler is installed, no more hot water is available and demand for showering will stop. When no electricity is available, and the waste water system does not have an electricity back-up system, it is undesirable to flush anything down the sewer system, which then affects the drinking water demand.
For two cases of stressed water supply, viz. pressure deficient situations and large scale electricity black-outs, we developed drinking water demand scenarios. We then used SIMDEUM to translate those scenarios into residential drinking water demand patterns, and compared them to normal drinking water demand patterns. The results help drinking water companies to design a resilient and robust water supply during low pressures and power outages.”

(Citaat: Blokker, E.J.M., Agudelo-Vera, C.M., Mesman, G.A.M., de Jong, S., Adamse, E. – Drinking Water Demand under Stressed Conditions; Quantification with SIMDEUM – 1st International WDSA CCWI 2018 Joint Conference, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 23-25 July – Vol 1(2018) -065)