Use of Hydroinformatics Technology for Real Time Water Quality Management and Operation of Distribution Networks.
Case Study of Villavicencio , Colombia
Alfonso
Segura Leonardo
March 2006
Abstract
Most of the water supplies systems in developing countries do not guarantee the access to safe dinking-water, due to either the intermittency nature of the systems or the poor operational practices in continuous supplies. These situations affect directly the efforts that the world is paying with regards to the achievement of water supply-related UN Millennium Development Goals. Within this context, the present research demonstrates the development of a variety of Hydroinformatics tools developed for real-time management of different and frequent water quality problems occurring in developing countries. The developed applications include: 1) a new approach for switching the intermittent condition towards the pressurised one; 2) posing and solving the operational responses to contamination events, were a methodology to find sets of operational interventions in a supply network for flushing a contaminant by minimizing the impact on the population is presented. The situation is treated as both single- and multi-objective optimization problem; 3) a demonstration of the utilisation of the Short Messages Services for real time management of contamination. All the tools have been tested and applied to a case study of the water supply system of Villavicencio, Colombia.
As one of the main results, this study demonstrates how the developed tools combined into one software application (QmagNet-V) can be helpful in the management of a contamination event, preparing SMS to advise the operators and to warn the affected population. The direct conclusion of the research is that the safe-drinking water could be improved in supply networks by means of the available technology and the hydroinformatics knowledge. Additionally, the developed application proved to have a real possibility to be an important complement of the Water Quality Surveillance Information System, tool developed by the Colombian National Health Institute.
Keywords: Water Quality, Distribution Networks Management, Short Message Service, Intermittent Supply, Operational Optimisation