Integrated Sustainability Index for Assessing the Performance of Water Distribution Network

A novel integrated sustainability index (ISI) and a related criticality index (CI) are proposed to assess the performance of nodes in a water distribution network (WDN). The ISI integrates information discerned from two hydraulic indicators (reliability and redundancy) and a topological measure (closeness centrality), which are critical for defining WDN performance. The hydraulic indicators focus on demand satisfaction with desired pressure at nodes, whereas topologic measures account for the interdependencies and interconnectedness of the network components. The CI aids in differentiating nodes with similar hydraulic or topologic characteristics to identify the most critical nodes in a WDN, whose maintenance and management are essential to ensure the smooth operation of the network. The potential of ISI over the conventional hydraulic indicators-based sustainability index and efficacy of the CI over five existing indices (betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality, demand centrality, and demand-adjusted entropic degree) is illustrated through case studies on one hypothetical and two real networks.