Serviceability Assessment for Cascading Failures in Water Distribution Network under Seismic Scenario

The stability of water service is a hot point in industrial production, public safety, and academic research. The paper establishes a service evaluation model for the water distribution network (WDN). The serviceability is measured in three aspects: (1) the functionality of structural components under disaster environment; (2) the recognition of cascading failure process; and (3) the calculation of system reliability. The node and edge failures in WDN are interrelated under seismic excitations. The cascading failure process is provided with the balance of water supply and demand. The matrix-based system reliability (MSR) method is used to represent the system events and calculate the nonfailure probability. An example is used to illustrate the proposed method. The cascading failure processes with different node failures are simulated. The serviceability is analyzed. The critical node can be identified. The result shows that the aged network has a greater influence on the system service under seismic scenario. The maintenance could improve the antidisaster ability of WDN. Priority should be given to controlling the time between the initial failure and the first secondary failure, for taking postdisaster emergency measures within this time period can largely cut down the spread of cascade effect in the whole WDN.