Cost-Benefit Analysis and Uncertainty Analysis of Water Loss Reduction Measures: Case Study of the Gothenburg Drinking Water Distribution System
Journal article, 2015

Methods for controlling leakage from water distribution systems vary with respect to cost and personnel requirements. The benefits of leakage reduction should be compared to the cost of alternative management options to determine which is the most cost effective. This study presents a new method for evaluating leakage from water distribution systems via combined cost benefit analysis (CBA) and uncertainty analysis. The case study considers four alternatives for leakage control. The results show that the inclusion of uncertainty analysis represents an improvement over traditional CBA where there is a high degree of uncertainty in the input data. Moreover, a clearer understanding of the available alternatives is obtained in situations where multiple alternatives show similar performances and there is no clear best choice. It was determined that in the case study distribution system, it is significantly more cost-effective to reduce leakage volumes by reactively repair broken pipes than to proactively replace them, despite large leakage losses.

Leakage control

Pipe replacement

Cost benefit analysis

Water loss

Pipe renewal

Uncertainty analysis

Author

Annika Malm

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Water Environment Technology

F. Moberg

Lars Rosen

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geology and Geotechnics

Thomas Pettersson

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Water Resources Management

0920-4741 (ISSN) 1573-1650 (eISSN)

Vol. 29 15 5451-5468

Subject Categories

Water Engineering

DOI

10.1007/s11269-015-1128-2

More information

Created

10/7/2017