Spectral Analysis of Uncertainty in Water Age

Water distribution networks are critical infrastructures that should ensure the reliable supply of high quality potable water to its users. Numerical models of these networks are generally governed by many parameters for which the true value is unknown. This may be due to a lack of knowledge like for consumer demand or due to a lack of accessibility as for the pipe roughness. For network managers, the effect of these uncertainties on the network state is important information that supports them in the decision-making process. This effect is generally evaluated by propagating the uncertainties using the mathematical model. In the past, perturbation and stochastic collocation methods have been used for uncertainty propagation. However, these methods are limited either in the accuracy of the results or the complexity of the calculation. This paper uses an alternative spectral approach with the polynomial chaos expansion that has the potential to give comparable results to the Monte Carlo sampling through the definition of a stochastic model. This approach is applied to the model of a water distribution network in order to evaluate the influence of uncertain demands on the water age.