Abstract

The safety of drinking water infrastructures is fundamental for economic, social and sanitary reasons, andshould be guaranteed both during ordinary service and in case of emergencies. Besides verifying and preventingdeterioration and ageing, the response of the system to extreme events should be also carefully analyzed. As a matterof fact, depending on the level of preparedness that water system authorities have adopted, the restoration of systemfunctionality may require days, weeks, or even months.Water supply systems are vulnerable towards several hazardous events, which can be mainly classified asnatural (such as earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, fires...) or anthropic (both intentional andaccidental, such as pollution, operational mistakes, black-outs etc.). Referring to the potential consequences of suchevents on the system, physical damages consisting in breakage or malfunctioning of one or more elements of thenetwork, should be distinguished from water contamination.A research activity is being developed by the Water Research Institute of the National Research Council(Istituto di Ricerca sulle Acque del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche IRSA-CNR), supported by the ItalianDepartment of Civil Protection (Dipartimento della Protezione Civile - DPC), with the aim of defining a strategicDecision Support System (DSS) for efficient and coherent decision-making in case of threats involving drinkingwater infrastructures. The DSS is based on Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs), a semi-quantitative probabilistic toolparticularly useful for managing emergency situations, characterized by time shortness and information uncertainty.It should be mainly used for detecting potential shortcomings of the system during emergencies, but also for helpingwater authorities in defining priorities of action, even with reference to ordinary management procedures.In the following, the methodological approach adopted is firstly presented, with specific reference to the mainfeatures of BBNs. Then, the structure of the methodology is described in synthesis. At last, the applicability of thetool is discussed, referring to a couple of real case studies developed with the cooperation of Acquedotto PuglieseS.p.A., an Italian water authority.

Autore Pugliese

• Pagano Alessandro , Portoghese Ivan , Vurro Michele

Tutti gli autori

• Pagano A.; Vurro M.; Giordano R.; Portoghese I.; Fratino U.; Berardi F.; Duro A.; Campopiano F.; Fiori G.; Vitucci G.; Palmieri V.

Titolo volume/Rivista

Environmental Engineering and Management Journal

Anno di pubblicazione

2013

ISSN

1843-3707

ISBN

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Numero di citazioni Wos

Nessuna citazione

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Numero di citazioni Scopus

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Settori ERC

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Codici ASJC

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