EPA Research Partner Support Story: Applications of the Water Network Tool for Resilience to assess drinking water systems’ resiliency to natural disasters
Partners: City of Poughkeepsie, NY and U.S. Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority
Challenge: Assessing Resilience of Drinking Water Systems to Natural Disaster
Resource: Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR)
Project Period: 2017 – 2022
The prototype Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) is an open-source resource designed to analyze a wide range of water distribution network failure and recovery scenarios and help users prioritize resilience enhancing actions. It can be used to estimate potential damage, understand how infrastructure damage would occur over time, evaluate preparedness strategies, prioritize response actions, and identify worst case scenarios, efficient repair strategies, and best practices for maintenance and operations.
“In 2017 EPA researchers conducted a computer modeling of our water usage to determine impact of supply deficiencies and distribution breaks. Their effort was instrumental in showing our Water Board where our risks are and was valuable in preparation of budget to address concerns identified.” – Poughkeepsie Water Treatment Facility, Plant Administrator Randy Alstadt
EPA researchers and EPA Region 2 collaborated with partners on two case studies to use WNTR to advance resilience―one with the City and Town of Poughkeepsie, NY, and the other with the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) Water and Power Authority.
In 2017, EPA researchers and partners began working with the City and Town of Poughkeepsie, NY, to investigate the resilience of their drinking water system. Using WNTR, they assessed a scenario involving the loss of source water to their treatment plant due to frozen intake pipes, drought, saltwater intrusion, or other events. Water utility decision makers were interested in evaluating how long they could supply water and what approaches, such as reducing usage, could effectively extend that timeframe. Researchers also assisted Poughkeepsie with analyzing how breaks in critical distribution pipes could affect firefighting capability. The resulting analysis was shared with the city, who proposed to use the results to plan for and justify the costs of system upgrades that would enhance resilience over the long-term.
In May 2020, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) approached EPA to partner in their resilience study of the USVI Water and Power Authority (WAPA), which supplies drinking water to the St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John islands. Using WNTR, EPA ORD researchers simulated four-week power outage scenarios, similar to those caused by hurricanes. NPS brought expertise in electrical power resilience, and together we addressed interdependencies between water and power systems. The results will be used by the utility to develop a hazard mitigation and resilience plan to address future hurricanes. Information from the analyses was shared with the utilities and journal articles detailing the approach were published (Poughkeepsie and USVI). These community applications demonstrate how WNTR can be used to identify utility vulnerabilities and offer specific resilience improvements to match different disaster scenarios, as well as structure capital investment plans.