Contaminant Flushing in Water Distribution Networks Incorporating Customer Faucet Control

Contamination events in water distribution networks (WDNs) begin with contaminant inception in the network. WDNs respond to events according to the detection, stopping service, and recovery phases. The recovery phase aims to remove hazardous substances by flushing them out so that the network can return to normal conditions. Flushing must be conducted efficiently and safely. The contaminated water is removed by allowing it to flow from outlet points in the network, which is enabled by displacing it with clean water from the source. Conventionally, a hydrant was used as the outlet point. Recent advancements in information and communication technology allow the use of electronic media to broadcast warnings and guidance rapidly. Water utilities can convey information to customers as part of the flushing scheme by notifying them to open and close their faucets at designated times. In this study, the viability of customer involvement in decontamination was examined. The proposed method was tested by evaluating its effectiveness in terms of the time and volume of water needed for decontamination, and the change in hydraulics to drain a fully contaminated district metered area (DMA). A comparable performance to hydrant flushing was found after testing in two actual DMA-sized WDNs.