A Method for Modeling Urban Water Infrastructures Combining Geo-Referenced Data

Water distribution networks are the backbone of any municipal water supply. Their task is to supply the population regardless of the respective demand. High resilience of these infrastructures is of great importance and has brought these infrastructures into the focus of science and politics. At the same time, the data collected is highly sensitive and often openly unavailable. Therefore, researchers have to rely on models that represent the topology of these infrastructures. In this work, a model is developed that allows the topology of an urban water infrastructure to be mapped using the example of Cologne, Germany by combining freely available data. On the one hand, spatial data on land use (local climate zones) are used to disaggregate the water demand within the city under consideration. On the other hand, the parallelism of water and urban transportation infrastructures is used to identify the topology of a network by applying optimization methods. These networks can be analyzed to identify vulnerable areas within urban structures.

Automated summary

Water distribution networks are essential for municipal water supply, and their resilience and data sensitivity are crucial. Models and optimization methods can be used to map the topology of urban water infrastructure and identify vulnerable areas within urban structures.