Restructuring a Water Distribution Network through the Reactivation of Decommissioned Water Tanks

Abstract

Water resource management is a topic of great environmental and social relevance, since water must be preserved and managed to avoid waste, providing high quality service at fair tariffs for the consumer, as imposed by the European Water Directive (2000/CE). In the rehabilitation of a water distribution network, it may be suitable to recover decommissioned water tanks, if any, rather than afford high construction costs to build new ones. In this case, the assessment of the residual service life of these concrete structures affected by steel bar corrosion is the premise for the design of new pipeline routes, connecting them. For this aim, rather than carrying tests that can accurately determine mechanical properties of the dismissed water tanks, it is possible to empirically estimate their level of degradation. Their conditions infer on the expected life of the restructured water distribution network. However, they allow the aqueduct to be used for its technical duration, assumed to be equal to the decommissioned water tanks residual service life in the case they do not require maintenance. Here, a simplified model for the assessment of the residual service life of decommissioned water tanks is first proposed and then applied to a case study, consisting of a part of the water network managed by “Ausino S.p.A. Servizi Idrici Integrati”, Cava de’ Tirreni, Italy. Once the service life is assessed, the QEPANET plugin is used in QGIS to speed up the design of the new pipeline routes in the georeferenced space, thus overcoming the limits offered by the classic EPANET solver.