SNL NewsNote: Designing Contaminant Warning Systems
As part of the Sandia Water Initiative, Sandia National Laboratories is partnering with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) National Homeland Security Research Center within the EPA's Threat Assessment Vulnerability Program to develop contaminant warning systems for protection of our nation’s water distribution systems. These warning systems use real-time water sensors to monitor water quality and provide early detection of chemical or biological contaminants. A central design challenge is to determine the location of real-time water sensors so as to maximally protect human life and minimize detection delays. Sandia’s discrete mathematics group (1415) has recently developed computational algorithms that can quickly find sensor placements, and which can analyze the optimality of a solution by exploiting the mathematical structure of this problem. Sandia's sensor placement solvers are actively being used to support the EPA's Water Sentinel Program. These methods have been effectively applied to water distribution systems that are 500 times larger than water networks considered for other sensor placement methods, and they are being used to design contaminant warning systems that will be deployed during 2006.
Contacts: Bill Hart (1415); wehart@sandia.gov, 505-844-2217
and Ray Finley (6115); refinle@sandia.gov, 505-844-4462
