TABLE OF CONTENTS Kevin Lansey
Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Larry W. Mays
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona
Y. K. Tung
Department of Civil Engineering
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong
To ensure delivery of finished water to the user, the water distribution system must be designed to accommodate a range of expected emergency loading conditions. These emergency conditions may generally be classified into three groups: broken pipes, fire demands, and pump and power outages. Each of these conditions must be examined with an emphasis on describing its impact on the system, developing relevant measures of system performance, and designing into the system the capacity required to handle emergency conditions with an acceptable measure of reliability. Reliability is usually defined as the probability that a system performs its mission within specified limits for a given period of time in a specified environment.
Reviews of the literature (see Mays, 1989, 1992, 2000) reveal that there is currently no universally accepted definition or measure of the reliability of water dis tribution systems. For layer systems with many interactive subsystems, it is extremely difficult to analytically compute the mathematical reliability. Accurate calculation of the mathematical reliability of water distribution systems requires knowledge of the precise reliability of the basic subsystems or components of the water distribution system and the impact on mission accomplishment caused by the...
