Sandia’s decision support analysis for water utilities increases the security and resilience of water distribution networks.
Example connectivity analysis showing critical hydraulic pathways upstream from a tank (red) and downstream to customers (blue).
Water distribution systems are a crucial component of urban infrastructure. They provide essential services, delivering a reliable source of safe drinking water to support human health, the economy, and the environment. However, these systems face multiple challenges including aging infrastructure, water quality concerns, uncertainty in supply and demand, natural disasters, environmental emergencies, and cyber and terrorist attacks. These incidents have the potential to disrupt water service for extended periods of time.
Researchers at Sandia integrate their expertise in simulation, resilience analysis, and software development to help water utilities understand how their system will respond to expected and unexpected incidents. Results from the decision support analysis help prioritize mitigation and recovery options to improve system security and resilience.
Our capabilities include:
Water distribution system model development
Hydraulic and water quality simulation
Public health and network impact assessment
Water quality anomaly detection
Sensor placement optimization
Mitigation and recovery plans
Sandia is partnering with the United States Environmental Protection Agency to integrate these capabilities into open source software.
WNTR
The Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) is an open-source Python package designed to analyze water distribution system resilience, developed at Sandia in partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The software includes capabilities to generate water distribution system models and evaluate resilience considering disaster and recovery scenarios. WNTR can be used to estimate infrastructure damage, evaluate preparedness strategies, prioritize response actions, and identify worse case scenarios and best practices for maintenance and operations.
