Water supply systems including the head works such as reservoirs and dams, pump stations, storage tanks, and distribution networks are important infrastructure to provide water to residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural users to maintain their daily activities. Billions of dollars per year are spent on construction, expanding, augmenting and operation (e.g., pumping) of these systems. The planning, design, operation and rehabilitation of these systems is a complex engineering decision-making process that often requires the use of simulation models to estimate pressures, velocities and water quality throughout the network under a range of conditions. This process is further complicated as 1) these decision-making conditions are changing in both short- and long-term, and 2) non-conventional water (e.g., harvested storm water) and energy (e.g., behind-the-meter solar) sources have been considered.
Recently, opportunities of further improvement arise from 1) increased accessibility to forecasts of water demand and energy prices in both short- and long-term that can be used to account for changed conditions, and 2) development in cheap and reliable sensors that enable the collection of real-time data to inform operation. We invite contributions from any field investigating the planning, design, operation, rehabilitation and simulation/modelling of water supply systems, and the analysis of water-energy nexus in these systems.
Key topics: Water resources system management, Water supply system optimisation, Water supply system control, Water-energy nexus