Technical Report: Flushing Strategies in Drinking Water Systems
This report addresses the problem of optimizing flushing strategies in drinking water systems for public safety and infrastructure maintenance, providing an overview for practitioners and researchers.
This report provides an overview of optimization methods for flushing strategies in drinking water distribution systems (WDS). It discusses the implementation of these methods for both the flushing procedure and planning, and offers suggestions for optimizing existing flushing planning frameworks.
Drinking water supply and distribution systems are critical infrastructure that has to be well maintained for the safety of the public. One important tool in the maintenance of water distribution systems (WDS) is flushing. Flushing is a process carried out in a periodic fashion to clean sediments and other contaminants in the water pipes. Given the different topographies, water composition and supply demand between WDS no single flushing strategy is suitable for all of them. In this report a non-exhaustive overview of optimization methods for flushing in WDS is given. Implementation of optimization methods for the flushing procedure and the flushing planing are presented. Suggestions are given as a possible option to optimise existing flushing planing frameworks.