WaterCAD V8i Criticality Analysis

Criticality Analysis
Bentley WaterCAD V8i provides the user with a unique and flexible tool to evaluate a water
distribution system and identify the most critical elements. The user is allowed to shut down
individual segments of the system and the results on system performance are determined.
Rather than having to do this through the scenario manager, the user will be able to simulate a
set of outages in a single run. This set can vary from a single element to each possible
segment in a large system.
Bentley WaterCAD V8i reports a variety of indicators for each outage during a criticality
analysis. Depending on the type of run, criticality analysis can report the flow shortfall, volume
shortfall or pressure shortfall in the distribution system for each segment outage.
Before being able to conduct a criticality analysis, Bentley WaterCAD V8i must identify the
segments to be removed from service. Once the options have been set in a Criticality Studies
level of the Segmentation and Criticality manager, the user decided which scenario is to be
used for the analysis and sets the rules for use of valving in the options tab.
In order to use criticality analysis, the user must make several decisions on the way that
Bentley WaterCAD V8i performs the analysis. Each of those is described below.
Segments vs. Individual Pipes
When a distribution system outage occurs, the portion of the system that is taken out of
service is referred to as a "segment". A "segment" or "Network segment" is the smallest portion
of a distribution system that can be isolated by valving.
The user must decide which elements will be used to identify segments. This is done under the
options tab under criticality studies. See the Segmentation section in the documentation for
details on this procedure.
There are two general approaches to isolating portions of the system. The more correct way is
to place all the isolating valves on pipe elements. In this way Bentley WaterCAD V8i can
accurately identify which system elements are out of service during an outage. In some cases
however, the user does not have sufficient data on the location of isolating valves. In this case,
Bentley WaterCAD V8i assumes that each pipe element can be isolated and each distribution
segment consists of a single pipe (not including the nodes at each end). The user identifies if
isolating valves are to be used in the analysis by checking the box next to "Consider Valves?"
Options tab of the Criticality Studies level. (Related to this is the ability of the user to identify if
a valve is to be considered the boundary of a segment all of the time, only when it is closed in
the selected scenario, or never.)
The figure below shows the segments that are identified if "Consider valves?" is checked. Note
that the various colors assigned to elements by the program are not representative of any
network attribute but are only used to differentiate adjacent segments.

The figure below shows the segments that are identified when the "Consider valves?" box is
unchecked.

The user then picks the scenario to be used in the analysis by clicking New and picking the
scenario from the list of available scenarios. Depending on the scenario selected, the criticality
analysis will be either a steady state or extended period simulation and will use or not use
pressure dependent demands (PDD). (If a fire flow analysis scenario is selected, it is treated
as a steady state and if a water quality scenario is selected, it is treated as an EPS.)
Once the scenario has been selected for segmentation, the user can then decide if segments
should be identified for the entire network or a subset of the network in the tab called
"Segmentation scope". If the scope of the segmentation analysis is a Subset of the system, an
ellipse (...) button becomes available. By clicking this button, the user can decide on the
elements to include using boxes, queries, polygons, or picking individual elements. When

done, the user right clicks and returns to segmentation scope. With the name of the scenario
highlighted, clicking the GO arrow will start the segmentation.
See the Segmentation topic for the details in running segmentation and viewing the results.
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