Inline mobile water quality sensors deployed for contamination intrusion localization

The intrusion of an unknown substance within a water distribution system can dramatically disrupt the ability to deliver sufficient quantities of clean water. Although prompt detection can be considered the most important matter to protect public from ingestion of unknown substances, it is equally critical that a managing authority locate the intrusion, and return the network to standard operation. This study investigates the use of previously studied inline mobile water quality sensors in an "on-demand" fashion to localize potential contamination intrusion locations. This study employs mobile sensors to traverse through water distribution system pipes along paths that provide the most new information about potential source location contamination statuses. Using network connectivity, upstream regions of nodes traversed by the mobile sensors are deemed either a feasible or infeasible intrusion region based on the contamination status determined by the mobile sensor. Successively, mobile sensors are input until the region of potential intrusion is smaller than a defined threshold number of network nodes. Results of the mobile sensors employed for contamination intrusion localization are compared to the fixed sensor information. This study represents a preliminary investigation of a simple heuristic method to best deploy mobile water quality sensors for contamination event localization.