Analysis of the risk of pipe breaks based on hydraulic model

The Water Supply System (WSS) distributes and supplies water to customers, which is used for consumption, production, maintenance of sanitary conditions and extinguishing fires, i.e. activities necessary for life. For this reason, hydraulic conditions of the WSS and the water quality must be maintained. One of the most common problems encountered in underground infrastructure is pipe failure, which has a major impact on WSS performance and water quality. To avoid such incidents, a safety plan should be developed. The WSSs safety plans requires some steps for risk assessment and decision-support systems. This system should use all the information resources stored in the databases. Currently, water supply companies have a number of network monitoring systems, however these are more warning rather than preventing systems. The risk is defined as undesirable situations that may occur, and therefore the preventing system should be more complex and based on historical operational events. The basic tools for building such a system are mathematical models that simulate the operational states of the WSS at different time intervals and during accidently situations. There are two kinds of models—hydraulic to simulate operating condition of the water pipe network such as pressure and velocity of water flow and-quality model, that show changes in water quality at different time intervals. The article presents a hydraulic model of a real WSS, created in WaterGEMS. This software uses historical data of pipe breaks in Pipe Break Analysis function, to compute a pipe break score for each pipe. The article presents the results of the analysis and risk assessment, presented in matrix form.