Protecting Public Health with Improved Water Service
Benton Harbor, Michigan, USA
Benton Harbor’s aging water system needs upgrading to maintain service and protect public health into the future, but the city has limited funds. Professor Glen Daigger and his team are identifying action to be taken now to improve the city’s water system, using risk assessment and risk analysis techniques, as well as mobile sensors to assess system condition.
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Principal Investigators
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Co-Principal Investigators
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Other Contributors
City of Benton Harbor
Metrics
Funding Sources
Urban Collaboratory
City of Benton Harbor Operating Funds
About the Project
The initial objective is to develop an improved assessment of the condition of Benton Harbor’s water distribution system. An existing water distribution hydraulic model is used to assess water pressure expected throughout the system, assuming that it is fully intact.
These results were then compared to historical pressure measurements made by the Fire Department to identify sections of the water distribution system where pressures deviate from those predicted by the model, indicating the presence of factors to be addressed, such as closed valves and/or sections with leakage. This assessment is used to determine locations to deploy mobile sensors to obtain a more contemporary assessment of system condition.
This initial assessment will then provide the data to assist the City in developing a phased improvement plan. Low pressures are a water service quality concern (sufficient pressure is needed to ensure adequate water supply to customers, water quality concern (low pressures suggest the potential for the intrusion of extraneous water into the system), and less than desired fire flow, if needed.
The research team will be deploying mobile sensors in Benton Harbor in the fall of 2018 to further refine the assessment of areas to focus improvement activities on. The data collected will provide the basis for developing a prioritized improvement and assessment plan going forward.
Project goals include:
- Summary and assessment of current City of Benton Harbor water supply system management and upgrade activities.
- Assessment of opportunities to integrate probabilistic risk management techniques into on-going water supply system management and upgrade activities.
- Standard operating procedures for probabilistic techniques selected for implementation.
- Assessment of benefits provided by probabilistic risk management techniques following one year of use.
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Learn MoreGlen Daigger PhD, MSCE, PE
Principal Investigator
Co-Founder
Professor, Environmental and Water Resources
Dr. Daigger is currently Professor of Engineering Practice at the University of Michigan and President and Founder of One Water Solutions, LLC, a water engineering and innovation firm. He previously served as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for CH2M HILL where he was employed for 35 years, as well as Professor and Chair of Environmental Systems Engineering at Clemson University. Actively engaged in the water profession through major projects, and as author or co-author of more than 100 technical papers, four books, and several technical manuals, he contributes to significantly advance practice within the water profession. He has advised many of the major cites of the world, including New York, Los Angles, San Francisco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Istanbul, and Beijing, and is currently a member of the Asian Development Bank Water Advisory Group. Deeply involved in professional activities, he is currently co-Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Water Environment and Reuse Foundation (WE&RF), and a Past President of the International Water Association (IWA). The recipient of numerous awards, including the Kappe, Freese, and Feng lectures and the Harrison Prescott Eddy, Morgan, and the Gascoigne Awards, he is a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), a Distinguished Fellow of IWA, and a Fellow of the Water Environment Federation (WEF). A member of a number of professional societies, Dr. Daigger is also a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineers.
Recent Projects
+ Optimizing Phosphorus Removal at Detroit’s Water Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF)
+ Protecting Public Health with Improved Water Service
+ Use of Artificial Intelligence in Water Resource Recovery Facilities (WRRF)
Seth Guikema PhD, MS
Co-Principal Investigator
Co-Founder
Associate Professor, Industrial & Operations Engineering
Industrial and Operations Engineering Graduate Program Advisor
Seth Guikema is an Associate Professor in Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan with a joint appointment in Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is also a Professor II at the University of Stavanger (Norway) in Societal Safety and Risk Management as well as a Data Science Research Fellow at One Concern, Inc. He is the President Elect of the Society for Risk Analysis (2019) and will serve as President of SRA in 2020. His research is grounded in risk analysis, predictive data analytics, and complex systems modeling and analysis. While much of his research focuses on natural hazards impacting communities and infrastructure, he also works on modeling and better understanding the effects of repeated hazards on communities and how they evolve over time, modeling issues of equity in urban areas, climate resilience of small-holder farmers in Ethiopia, terrorism risk analysis, and human trafficking.
Recent Projects
Nancy Love PhD, BCEE, PE
Co-Principal Investigator
Co-Founder
Borchardt and Glysson Collegiate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Nancy G. Love is the Borchardt and Glysson Collegiate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. She previously served as chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and as Associate Dean in the University of Michigan’s Rackham School of Graduate Studies. She previously taught at Virginia Tech.
Dr. Love’s research interests include water quality and environmental biotechnology. Specifically, she studies the fate of toxins and pharmaceuticals in wastewater, as well as the technologies that can be used to remove these chemical stressors.
Dr. Love holds a PhD in Environmental Systems Engineering from Clemson University (1994) and both a Masters of Science (1986) and a Bachelors of Science (1984) in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.