Drinking Water Infrastructure Resilience Research
EPA is developing resources and tools toward a systems approach for maintaining drinking water infrastructure performance and integrity and increasing infrastructure resilience. This includes developing approaches to protect human health, minimizing the current and long-term costs of supplying water to all customers, and assessing vulnerability to, preparedness for, and response and recovery from extreme weather and other disasters. Research techniques utilize modeling, data analytics, and management tools, as well as analytical, geospatial, and commercially available sensor data to assess system conditions, hydraulics, water quality, and resilience from source water to the consumer’s tap.
EPANET is a tool that helps optimize the efficiency of distribution systems based on the latest scientific data. The software helps understand the movement and fate of drinking water constituents within distribution systems and can be used to model contamination threats and evaluate resilience to security threats or natural disasters. Today, engineers and consultants use EPANET to design and size new water infrastructure, retrofit existing aging infrastructure, optimize operations of tanks and pumps, reduce energy usage, investigate water quality problems, and prepare for emergencies.
Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) is an EPANET compatible, open source Python package allowing for end-to-end evaluation of drinking water infrastructure resilience to disasters. The software improves upon EPANET's capabilities by fully integrating hydraulic and water quality simulation, damage estimates and response actions, and resilience metrics into a single platform.