Drinking Water Contamination Warning Systems: Water Utilities Driving Water Security Research

摘要

Many water utilities are evaluating options for developing contamination warning systems (CWS)—monitoring and surveillance systems that can detect contamination incidents in distribution systems in time to allow mitigation of public health and/or economic effects. In spite of the high level of interest, the water community is still wrestling with many difficult and fundamental questions, such as what the objective of a CWS should be, where sensors should be placed, what monitoring devices should be used, and how to distinguish contamination incidents from background sensor noise or an erroneous sensor reading.