Title: Index of network resilience for urban water distribution systems

Authors: Arka Pandit; John C. Crittenden

Addresses: Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology, 828 W. Peachtree Street NW, Suite 320, Atlanta, GA 30332-0595, USA; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355, USA ' Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology, 828 W. Peachtree Street NW, Suite 320, Atlanta, GA 30332-0595, USA; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Mason Building, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0355, USA

Abstract: A unique demographic shift towards urban centres has necessitated incorporation of sustainability principles in the tenets of urban infrastructure planning and design. Adopting resilience as the indicator of sustainability, this paper presents a novel index of network resilience (INR) for urban water distribution systems. The index developed in this paper incorporates six network attributes to develop a composite INR based on the topology of the water distribution systems. A multi-criteria analysis (MCA) using the weighted summation approach is employed to evaluate the alternative configurations which would satisfy the demand and other hydraulic requirements. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was assigned to assign weights to the attributes and was optimised for two scenarios: resilience and efficiency. Using the original configuration of Anytown network as the base case scenario, four alternative designs were developed. The results indicate that resilience of the system, in terms of increased robustness and redundancy, can be increased through a better topology without increasing material and energy investment. In addition, the results also indicate that there might be some potential trade-off between resilience and efficiency of flow for the network.

Keywords: resilience index; urban infrastructure; complex networks; urban water systems; urban sustainability; multicriteria decision analysis; MCDA; infrastructure resilience; cities; water distribution systems; sustainable development; infrastructure planning; infrastructure design; hydraulic requirements; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; infrastructure efficiency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCIS.2016.075865

International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, 2016 Vol.12 No.1/2, pp.120 - 142

Received: 04 Mar 2014
Accepted: 18 Mar 2014
Published online: 10 Apr 2016 *

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