Water distribution systems (WDS) are vulnerable to contaminants, and systematic risk assessment can provide valuable information for assisting threat management. Contamination events are sociotechnical systems, in which the interactions among consumers and water infrastructure may generate unpredicted public health consequences. This research develops a sociotechnical risk assessment framework that simulates the dynamics of a contamination event by coupling an agent-based modeling (ABM) framework with Monte Carlo simulation (MCS), genetic algorithm (GA) optimization, and a multi-objective GA. The ABM framework couples WDS simulation with agents to represent consumers in a virtual city. MCS is applied to estimate the uncertainty in human exposure, based on probabilistic models of event attributes. A GA approach is used to identify critical contamination events by maximizing risk, and a multi-objective approach explores the trade-off between consequence and occurrence probabilities. Results that are obtained using the sociotechnical approach are compared with results obtained using a conventional engineering model. The sociotechnical approach removes assumptions that have been used in engineering analysis about the static, homogeneous, and stationary behaviors of consumers, and results demonstrate new insight about the impacts of these actions and interactions on the public health consequences of contamination events.
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Research Article|
August 29 2013
Sociotechnical risk assessment for water distribution system contamination threats
Amin Rasekh;
1Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, 3136 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-3136, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
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M. Ehsan Shafiee;
M. Ehsan Shafiee
2Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University, C.B. 7908, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA
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Emily Zechman;
Emily Zechman
2Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, North Carolina State University, C.B. 7908, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA
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Kelly Brumbelow
Kelly Brumbelow
1Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, Texas A&M University, 3136 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-3136, USA
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Journal of Hydroinformatics (2014) 16 (3): 531–549.
Article history
Received:
February 19 2013
Accepted:
July 17 2013
Citation
Amin Rasekh, M. Ehsan Shafiee, Emily Zechman, Kelly Brumbelow; Sociotechnical risk assessment for water distribution system contamination threats. Journal of Hydroinformatics 1 May 2014; 16 (3): 531–549. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/hydro.2013.023
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