Reliability analysis of water-pipe networks in Cracow, Poland

This paper presents a method of comprehensively estimating the reliability of water-pipe networks, which evaluates: failure and repair rates, mean time to failure, mean recovery time and probability of failure-free operation at any time. Following this, diameters, materials and exploitation times of water pipes were studied in a multifactorial regression analysis of unit failure intensity factors. Sophisticated statistical analysis methods were used to assess the reliability of water supply systems (WSS). The formula of unit failure intensity factor is a statistically significant model of reliability (R=0.886636 and R² =0.76123) and can be used not only for complex exploitation analyses of WSS, but also in the development of water company strategies.