Investigating water quality dynamics in distribution networks with dynamically adaptive connectivity

ABSTRACT Water distribution networks with dynamically adaptive connectivity offer greater operational flexibility. While this strategy has demonstrated improvements in pressure management and network resiliency, further research is needed to better understand its impact on water quality dynamics. This paper investigates the short-term variability of disinfectant residuals in a real-world distribution network operated with dynamic connectivity. We simulate water quality dynamics under two control configurations with pressure control and automatic flushing valve operations. Our simulation results inform the development of flow variability metrics to reveal the relationship between changing hydraulic conditions and increased water quality dynamics. These metrics can (i) improve observability by supporting the placement of additional water quality monitoring locations and (ii) enhance controllability by enabling the formulation of optimization problems that incorporate hydraulic surrogates for modelling water quality. Furthermore, we validate the identified regions of increased water quality dynamics using continuous disinfectant data from a large-scale experimental programme. Our findings emphasize the need for further analytical and experimental research to manage water quality in distribution networks with dynamically adaptive connectivity and hydraulic control.