Managing Strategic Infrastructure To Ensure Safe Drinking Water

Monitoring of the strategic trunk main system and final water quality pre upgrades. Design and implement mains conditioning across the trunk main system. Assess trunk main system performance. Critical will be the rate of material accumulation / period between needing to repeat interventions, assessed using the VCDM (Variable Condition Discolouration Model, www.PODDS.co.uk).
Repeat / continue the above post the treatment works upgrades. Compare and contrast the findings pre and post upgrades. Assessment of the trade-offs between capital and operation investments and resulting service improvements. Customer contact data used for validation.
Installation of monitoring equipment including hydraulic (flow and pressure) and water quality (primarily turbidity but other parameters such as chlorine) will be deployed to enable network wide coverage. This will either be via permanent strategic placement, or strategies developed to utilise mobile monitors (i.e. battery powered) to capture planned events or as baseline performance records. As part of this approach trunk main water quality monitoring locations will need be identified and established as part of a company plan to enable rapid and repeatable deployment of mobile monitors. Specific monitoring points will facilitate monitor validation methods that can be used to ensure confidence in absolute, and therefore comparable, measured values between repeated visits (water quality monitoring typically uses non-direct measures, such as optical or electrical conductance, with the result that instrument drift is common). As part of a SMART network plan, all data will be made accessible via a single location, where data analysis can be undertaken to derive additional actionable insights. Periodic managed discolouration material mobilisation events (PODDS conditioning) will be applied. With detailed flow and turbidity data, VCDM (Variable Condition Discolouration Model, www.PODDS.co.uk) will allow accurate determination of a material generation rate for specific pipe sections whilst the impact on other parameters can be assessed. This non-invasive, low cost and zero discharge approach process that has been shown successful in mitigating discolouration risk and improving network resilience will be conducted prior to and post treatment works upgrades, allowing the impact to be quantified. In addition, improvements to understanding system behaviour and potential warning signals can be investigated to further minimise the inescapable risks posed as material accumulates, thereby further improving service.