RELIABILITY-ANALYSIS OF WATER-SUPPLY SYSTEMS INTEGRATING WITH TREATMENT-PLANT OPERATIONS

This paper analyzes the reliability of water supply systems consisting of water source, a water treatment plant, storage, a pumping station and a lumped demand node in series. The random fluctuation of the wate r quality of the source water, the limited water processing rate of th e treatment plant, random pump failure and repair, and random demand v ariation, are considered for the assessment of the system reliability. Expected demand shortage is employed as a measurement of system relia bility. The decision to be made is the optimal water processing rate a t the treatment plant at each period so that the total expected shorta ge over a finite time horizon is minimized. Dynamic programming is emp loyed to formulate the model.