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Handbook of Water and Wastewater Systems Protection pp 247–264Cite as

Protecting Water and Wastewater Systems: Water Distribution Systems Security Modeling

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Part of the book series: Protecting Critical Infrastructure ((PCIN,volume 2))

Abstract

During the last decade the world faced a serious threat related to terror attacks and it is now clear that water supplies are terror targets. An FBI bulletin states that the warning is based on terrorist manuals and documents found at al-Qaeda sites in Afghanistan. As a result, online warning monitoring has received the highest priority by the US General Accounting Office (GAO) and was recently recommended to the US Senate for extensive federal support. Near real-time monitoring technologies were cited as critical to helping drinking water systems detect and respond quickly to threats related to terrorist water contamination, to minimize the impact of any such contamination by facilitating a quick response, and to help in restoring systems post an event. Drinking water utilities in Israel and around the world are vulnerable to various types of terrorist attacks including warfare contamination and bioterrorism. A distribution system is comprised of water tanks, pipes, pumps, and other components that deliver treated water from treatment plants to consumers. Particularly among large utilities, distribution systems may contain thousands of kilometers of pipes and numerous delivery points, which make such systems highly vulnerable to deliberate contamination injection by a terrorist. An online contaminant monitoring system (OCMS) is considered by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) as a major tool to reduce the likelihood of a deliberate contaminant chemical or biological intrusion. An OCMS should be designed to detect random contamination events and to provide information on the location of the contaminants within the system, including an estimation of the injection characteristics (i.e., contaminant type, injection time and duration, concentration, and injected mass flow rate). Once the type of the contaminant and its characteristics are discovered, a containment strategy can be implemented to minimize the pollutant spread throughout the system and to suggest for the system’s portions that need to be flushed. The objective of this chapter is to describe issues related to water security within the context of water distribution systems modeling and to highlight future needs and challenges in this area.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel

    Avi Ostfeld

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  1. Avi Ostfeld
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Correspondence to Avi Ostfeld .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. 9627 Lansford Drive, Cincinnati, 45242, Ohio, USA

    Robert M. Clark

  2. Dept. Economics, Temple University, N. Broad Street 1801, Philadelphia, 19122, Pennsylvania, USA

    Simon Hakim

  3. Faculty of Civil Engineering, Haifa, Israel

    Avi Ostfeld

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Ostfeld, A. (2011). Protecting Water and Wastewater Systems: Water Distribution Systems Security Modeling. In: Clark, R., Hakim, S., Ostfeld, A. (eds) Handbook of Water and Wastewater Systems Protection. Protecting Critical Infrastructure, vol 2. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0189-6_14

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