气候变化领域集成服务门户

This article documents lessons learned from US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) interviews with representatives of eight leading US water utilities that have implemented advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to improve the resiliency and security of their water distribution systems. Improvements were made using noncustomer billing functions to detect customer leaks, reverse flow, and meter tampering. Insights that can be leveraged by other water utilities as well as gaps that reduce the benefits of the new functions are identified and discussed. In addition, USEPA promotes the use of a surveillance and response system (SRS) to improve the detection and response time to water quality incidents within the distribution system. An SRS integrates information from multiple monitoring and surveillance components to alert the utility to water quality anomalies, which could be associated with possible contamination. On the basis of positive anecdotes from the interviews, application of AMI as a component of an SRS is also reviewed.