Appraisal of source head methods for calculating reliability of water distribution networks

This paper presents a new way of interpreting the results of the traditiona l demand-driven network analysis as an approximation,to pressure-driven sim ulation so as to calculate the reliability of single-source networks. The a pproach is useful because most network modeling software packages use the d emand-driven analysis approach and are incapable of simulating pressure-def icient conditions properly. The formulation draws from recent developments in pressure-driven simulation and can be used to calculate the reliability of an entire water distribution network or that of the individual demand no des. The method herein is probabilistic in that the random nature of link f ailures is accounted for. Using a sample network, it is shown that the meth od has several advantages including simplicity and a very high computationa l efficiency.