Pasqualini, Donatella with Marc Witkowski, Perry Klare, Paolo Patelli and Catherine Cleland, "A Model for a Water Potable Distribution System and its Impacts resulting from a Water Contamination Scenario", 2006 July 23-2006 July 27
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Contamination of a public water supply distribution system would have far-raging public health and
economic effects. Emergency response decision-makers need a tool for quickly calculating resources
requirement in the aftermath of a contamination incident.
A model is needed to describe the potable water distribution system itself and the cascading effects of
a disruption of that distribution system on other public institutions such as hospitals, transportation
networks, etc. In this paper we present a system dynamics model describing a potable water
distribution system that serves an urban area. This model is a component of the Critical Infrastructure
Protection Decision Support System (CIP-DSS) project, which models the dynamics of a set of coupled
individual infrastructures. We investigate the interdependencies of potable water distribution systems
on other critical infrastructures merging our model with other infrastructure models developed under
the CIP-DSS project. The main focus of this work is to study the consequences of a disruption on a
potable water distribution system. For this purpose we analyze the effects on public health and the
economic consequences resulting from contamination of a public water supply.