Human Health Impact Analysis of Contaminant in IoT-Enabled Water Distributed Networks

Abstract

This paper aims to assess and analyze the health impact of consuming contaminated drinking water in a water distributed system (WDS). The analysis was based on qualitative simulation performed in two different models named hydraulic and water quality in a WDS. The computation focuses on quantitative analysis for chemically contaminated water impacts by analyzing the dose level in various locations in the water network and the mass of the substance that entered the human body. Several numerical experiments have been applied to evaluate the impact of water pollution on human life. They analyzed the impact on human life according to various factors, including the location of the injected node (pollution occurrence) and the ingested dose level. The results show a significant impact of water contaminant on human life in multiple areas in the water network, and the level of this impact changed from one location to another in WDSs based on several factors such as the location of the pollution occurrence, the contaminant concentration, and the dose level. In order to reduce the impact of this contaminant, water quality sensors have been used and deployed on the water network to help detect this contaminant. The sensors were optimally deployed based on the time-detection of water contamination and the volume of polluted water consumed. Numerical experiments were carried out to compare water pollution’s impact with and without using water quality sensors. The results show that the health impact was reduced by up to 98.37% by using water quality sensors.