Probabilistic Risk-Management as Integral Drinking Water Concept

97% of the worldwide freshwater is contained in the groundwater. Hence, its protection and management is crucial from a social, ecological and economic perspective. But, the steadily growing demand for clean and secure drinking water supply collides with other uses and factors in the catchment areas (e.g. increasing traffic, use of new pesticides, growing pharmaceutical residues in waste water). The suppliers need to know, control and manage the potential threads in their catchments in order to the water quality. Unfortunately, there are only few holistic approaches, able to quantify the risks along the water production line (from the catchments to the final users), which can be used for supporting decision making.

In this project a risk management system is developed. It is able to make a probabilistic, quantitative and holistic analysis and delimitation of the risks in the drinking water industry. Further, it is flexible enough to work with few data, low computational effort and without the need for expert knowledge.

Overall, the concept allows a wider and more precise analysis and delimitation of risks. Also, it provides insights into the design of monitoring and early-warning systems, required for obtaining an optimal resource allocation in the risk management of water supply.