Risk Management of Water Supply and Sanitation Systems (2009)

As part of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Series, this collection of essays covers the topics of water as it impacts the environment, relates to waste water technology and pollution control, and other environmental and engineering topics. The design, construction, age, and condition of water and waste water systems and the coordination of agencies responsible for maintenance determine their capacity to withstand possible threats and the sustainability of the systems. The first article, by Petr Hlavinek, emphasized the need for management of water infrastructure to understand potential natural and man-made risks, ranging from rains, with subsequent floods and land slides, and earthquakes, with consequences of seismic shifts. According to scientific predictions, climate change might exacerbate these vulnerabilities.

Petr Hlavinek introduced the threats to water and waste water systems. "Landslides, intense rains, hurricanes, drought, fires, and earthquakes" (p. 3) constitute some occurrences that  can overwhelm their capacity and undermine water systems.  The author cited the IPCC WG 2 fourth Assessment Report of 2007, which addressed climate change, the "increases in wind intensity, decline of permafrost coverage, and increases of both drought and heavy precipitation events" (p. 4). The results
will have various effects depending on the region--dry areas will have less precipitation, causing droughts, and wetter regions will have more, causing floods. Therefore, the author emphasized the imperative of reducing by one-half the number of the world's people without adequate water and sanitation by 2015.

The author detailed the damages of floods, earthquakes, and landslides.  To mitigate risks, the author recommend six steps for vulnerability analysis: "Identification of components of system, quantifying magnitude of anticipated disasters, estimating effects of the anticipated disaster on each system, estimating all water demands during and after the disaster, determining capability of the water supply system to meet demands, identification of system components that cause failure" (p. 8). Comprehensive management incorporates "an inventory with maps, condition inspections, and data for operations and maintenance scenarios" found in enterprise asset management systems. This information allows for an aggregation and disaggregation of water and waste water systems to assess areas of risk under different conditions and natural disaster intensities and probabilities. Historical data enable multiple useful measurements for vulnerability analysis--the potential  "magnitude of anticipated disasters . . . to assess the effects of each disaster type on each component" (p.8).

Risk analysis and management involves "mitigation, response, recovery, and communication" (p. 10), a process of coordinating all people, technology, equipment, and disaster scenarios. Emergency management and planning encompasses a realistic community exercise of critical scenarios, with police, emergency, and water and waste water stakeholders.