REDUNDANCY MODEL FOR WATER SUPPLY SYSTEMS UNDER EARTHQUAKE ENVIRONMENTS

This paper presents a comprehensive redundancy model for water supply systems under earthquake risk based on the basic concepts in information theory. A seismic redundancy index is defined in order to represent uncertainty and redundancy of a system as an entropic measure. The seismic redundancy index can be used along with seismic reliability of the pipeline network in order to choose the optimum layout in design or finding the best mitigation plan against seismic hazard. The validation of the method is examined in application conducting a case study of Kobe city water supply network. A comparison between redundancy indices in the network demonstrates that an increase in the value of redundancy, after seismic mitigation, increases the ability of the water distribution network to respond to failure problems in the network under seismic condition.