Fuzzy Fault Tree Analysis in Evaluating the Risk of Drinking

Water Incidents

Zhang Yuhang
6858570
Water Science and Management
Utrecht University

Key words: drinking water incidents, risk evaluation, fuzzy fault tree analysis
Catalogue

1. Introduction
1.1 Types of drinking water incidents
1.2 Factors leading to drinking water incidents
1.3 Serious incidents in history and negative social impacts
1.4 Previous effort for drinking water incidents and knowledge gap
2. Goal
3. Method
3.1 Fuzzy fault tree method introduction
3.2 Qualitative analysis on fuzzy fault tree
3.3 Statistical analysis of history sudden water pollution and Investigation of potential risk
sources
3.4 Quantitative calculation on fuzzy fault tree
4. Result
5. Discussion
5.1 Meaning of the result
5.2 Suggestion for the fuzzy fault tree method
5.3 Suggestion for local government in north-east area of China
6. Conclusion

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1. Introduction:
Drinking water security has been considered as the global problem, and sudden water
pollution, or called a drinking water incident, is one of the common problems especially in
areas lacking water source protection. It will cause human health harm, people’s property and
economic losses and negative social impacts. Therefore, this article will concentrate on
drinking water accidents and try to use Fuzzy Fault Tree analysis to evaluate the risk of
drinking water accidents.

1.1 Types of drinking water incidents

According to the research did by Li et al. (2007) about 152 drinking water incidents in China,
the type of drinking water accidents can be categorized by 4 features, which are pollution
sources, pollution materials, pollution phases and pollution location.

For pollution sources type, drinking water incidents can be separated as domestic pollution,
industrial pollution, and agricultural pollution. Here, domestic pollution includes waste water,
fecal, surface runoff in urban areas and wastewater from hospitals. This type of pollution is
believed to be the major source of drinking water, especially for the incidents in urban areas.
industrial pollution majorly means the contamination of drinking water caused by waste water
from factory or accidental leaking. Last type is agricultural pollution, which is usually
connected with fertilizers and pesticides. For this category, domestic pollution was the most
common incident among 152 events.

For pollution materials, it can be divided as physical pollution, chemical pollution, and
biological pollution. Physical pollution includes thermal pollution and erosion, but this type of
solution was seldomly happens in China but more common in tropical areas (Wantzen, 2006).
Biological pollution, including microbes and algae, was the most common reason for drinking
water incidents in China. Chemical pollution happened after the 1990s, including chromium,
lead, benzene, and other products from factories.

For pollution phases, most drinking water incidents in China happened in water sources, but
the percentages of storage and transport should not be ignored. For the location of pollution,
most incidents happened in residential areas, others happened in schools and companies.

The exact data can be seen in the table below. All the data in the following tables are from Li
et al. (2007).

Table. 1 Pollution sources of drinking water accidents in China from 1986 to 2005
Type Domestic Industrial Agricultural Materials Other Multi-
sources
percentage 65% 22% 2% 1% 4% 5%

Table.2 Pollution materials of drinking water accident in China from 1986 to 2005
Type Physical Chemical Biological
percentage lack of data 30% 69%

Table.3 Pollution phase of drinking water accidents in China from 1986 to 2005
Type Source Storage Tap water Other Multi-phase

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 pipe
Percentage 57% 19% 19% 1% 4%

Table.4 Pollution location of drinking water accidents in China from 1986 to 2005
Type Residential School Company Water Family Other Multi-
area source area location
picking
point
Percentage 49% 19% 14% 9% 4% 4% 1%

1.2 Factors leading to drinking water incidents

According to Li, et al. (2007) study from 1986 to 2005 in China, the reasons leading to drinking
water incidents can be divided into 5 groups. The most dominant reason is the pollution in
the water source area, which took over 56.6% of the historical accidents in that period. The
reason behind it was believed to be the lack of water security facilities. The storage container
problems were the second important reason. About 12.5% of incidents were caused by it. Dirty
circumstances, poor seal, and unsuitable location were usually the reason behind it. Apart
from these two, Transportation incidents can also become problems. For example, drinking
water pipes relate to other water which is not aimed to provide safe drinking water sometimes.
Once the supply of drinking water is stopped, this unhealthy water will get through the pipes
and causes problems. Fault of sewage transfer projects can also become a problem. An
example is the accident happened in Urumqi, 2002. The leakage of sewage water caused that
incident. Operation fault of sewage treatment plants might be another reason, but that was
only taking over 5.9% in that period.

1.3 Serious incidents in history and negative social impacts

In China, the most serious and well-known drinking water accident in recent years is the
incident in the Songhua River in 2005, which directly accelerated the drinking water
monitoring system and pushed the new criteria about water quality in 2007. On November
13, 2005, the explosion of an aniline production factory in Jilin led to more than 100 tons of
nitrobenzene (NB) discharging into the Songhua river. As the result, Harbin, which is the
capital of Heilongjiang Province, was forced to stop its water supply for 4 days and over a
million people were affected because of it (Li, 2008). On July 6, 1988, 20 tons of aluminium
sulphate were discharged into the treated water reservoir in Camelford, Cornwall. Over 20000
people living in that area were influenced (Altmann, 1999). In Romania, the arsenic
contamination events in 2000 because of the failures of a mining tailing dam. About 200000
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m wastewater was distributed into the Tisa River (Macklin, et al., 2003). These disasters
reminded people that the risk of drinking water incidents is still potential.

For the negative impacts of drinking water incidents, it can be categorized into 3 types. First,
the drinking water supply would be influenced by drinking water incidents. The incident in
the Songhua River is an example (Li, et al., 2008; Li, et al., 2007). Second, human health will
be affected because of the contamination. The study about the incidents in Camelford,
Cornwall (Altmann, 1999) was claiming that brain function was disturbed by the incident.
There are also some articles describing the relationship between cancer and the
contamination of arsenic (Celik et al., 2008; Smith, et al., 1992). Finally, one aspect is the

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damage to the ecosystem. During the incident in the Tisa River mentioned above, a large area
of fishes, including Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria, were dying in the downstream (Macklin, et
al., 2003).

1.4 Previous effort for drinking water incidents and knowledge gap

In order to reduce the impacts from drinking water incidents, previous literature and
regulations have paid lots of efforts on early warning and emergency drinking treatment.
Globally, people have set several water criteria to monitor and avoid the long-term impact
on health, like the drinking water guideline from WHO. However, the specific guideline
threshold values for an incident are lacking in these criteria. Therefore, an index called as
Drinking water Alert Level was denoted (DAL), which is used to evaluate whether a
contamination will have risk for human health in a short period. These values will be calculated
for certain contamination from the toxicity of that contamination. Another similar approach
which is called as Provisional Advisory Levels (PALs) is also under development and might be
part of US-EPA’s National Homeland Security Research Center. However, one thing should
be noticed is that both methods are still not widely accepted (Thompson, 2011).

Emergency drinking water treatment is the effort that Chinese government is focusing on
after the incidents in the Songhua River in 2005. The key concept is establishing the pretest
for drinking water incidents to reflect quickly once drinking water incidents happen. For each
type of drinking water incident, one or two technologies are prepared. The list of
recommended technology can be seen in the table below. All technologies here have been
tested to check whether it is valid or not (Zhang and Chen, 2009).

Table.5 Recommended technology for specific pollution in China. The information is from
Zhang and Chen, 2009.
Pollutants Recommended technology
Metal Chemical precipitation by pH adjustment
Other inorganics Oxidation or reduction
Pesticides and herbicides Activated carbon adsorption
Chloro-hydrocarbons Air striping or adsorption
Benzenes Activated carbon adsorption
Disinfection by products (DBPs) Air striping or adsorption
Microorganism Enhanced disinfection
Other organics Activated carbon adsorption

In conclusion, people have already made a lot of effort to reduce the impacts from drinking
water incidents. However, the study for evaluating the risk in a certain area is limited. An
evaluation about risks of drinking water incidents would be helpful to concentrate resources
and prevent the negative impacts.

2. Goal:

The purpose for this article is that learning how to use Fuzzy Fault Tree analysis for evaluating
drinking water incidents risks. Another further purpose is discussing whether this method is
useful or not based on the process of calculation. The location chosen to do the analysis is
north-east of China. The location is randomly chosen.

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3. Method:

3.1 Fuzzy fault tree method introduction

Fuzzy fault tree method is a method using graphs to deduce the most possible factors causing
problems. This method divides events into two types, basic events, and top events, and
generates the potential risk of top events from probability of basic events. It is designed by
Professor Azriel Rosenfeld, but the purpose is not in environmental issues (Mordeson, 2001).
Jian, et al., (2011) introduced this method into Drinking water incidents. This article will majorly
follow the study Jian, et al. (2011) did to see the risks in Netherland. The general technical
route of Fuzzy fault tree method in drinking water incidents can be seen in figure 1.

Figure.1 The general technical route of Fuzzy fault tree method in drinking water incidents
(Jian, et al., 2011).

3.2 Qualitative analysis on fuzzy fault tree

For the Fuzzy fault tree method, the relationship with basic events and top events should be
outlined in this part. Jian, et al. (2011) listed 33 basic events that have the possibility to increase
the potential risks of drinking water incidents, which contribute to the finial risk. However, in
this article, these events will not be used as the basic events, since most of the data this article
required is from the statistical work did by Li, et al. (2007). The relationship between basic
events and top events can be seen in figure 2. In table 6, the name for each event is offered.

Figure.2 The relationship between basic events and top events. The method is from Jian, et
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al. (2011) but the events are from Li, et al. (2007).

Table.5 The list of basic events, top events, and their code. (Li, et al., 2007).
No. Name
1 Decentralized water supply
2 Self-contained water supply
3 Centralized water supply
4 Poor seal
5 Operation error
6 Water source pollution
7 Fault of sewage transfer project
8 Transportation incidents
9 Operation fault of sewage treatment plants
10 Storage container problems
11 Potential Risk

3.3 Statistical analysis of historical sudden water pollution and Investigation of potential
risk sources

In this process, the purpose is collecting the basic chance from historical data or assuming a
suitable chance for some basic events, like operator error. The process to collect these data
is not provided in the paper from Jian, et al. (2011). Therefore, this part will be done by
literature review.

This paragraph will show how the possibility is collected by an example of operator error.
According to Li, et al. (2007) data about frequency of drinking water accidents in China,
generally, 2.6% of accidents happen because of operator error. Meanwhile, the area where
this article is looking for takes over 25.6% drinking water incidents from 1986 to 2005.
Therefore, the mean chance for operator error in Heilongjiang will be 2.6%*25.6%, which is
equal to 0.0067. In Jian, et al. (2011), the difference between upper limit and lower limit is
0.003, which is 3/5 of the mean value. So, the difference in Heilongjiang would be assumed
as 0.0040.

One thing should be noticed, such a method to generate mean value and difference between
upper limit and lower limit has a lot of difference compared with the original method. For
example, the value 0.0067 is not the chance for operator error but a ratio how much accidents
caused by operator error might take over. However, these data are reasonable to answer the
question “If a drinking water incident happens in China, what is the chance to happen in
north-east of China?” because of the property of the data.

As a result, the mean value and difference for each event can be seen in table 6.

Table. 6 List of events. The data without * is from Li, et al. (2007). The data with * is from Jian,
et al. (2011).
Basic event Mean possibility (m) Difference between upper
limit and lower limit (α-β)
Decentralized water supply 0.0303 Lack of data

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 Self-contained water supply 0.0472 Lack of data
Centralized water supply 0.0590 Lack of data
Fault of sewage transfer 0.0202 0.0121*
project
Transportation incidents 0.0236 0.0165*
Operation fault of sewage 0.0151 0.0076*
treatment plants
Poor seal 0.0252 0.0177*
Operation error 0.0067 0.0040*

Some events do not have convincing differences because it is not mentioned in Jian, et al.
(2011). Therefore, they will be assumed as zero in this article.

3.3 Quantitative calculation on fuzzy fault tree

In this step, the chance for each basic event is assumed as an individual event. The chance for
top event will represented by the formula below:
𝐹 = 1 − (1 − 𝐹1 ) ∗ (1 − 𝐹2 ) ∗ (1 − 𝐹3 ) ∗ … (1 − 𝐹𝑛 )
And Fn, which is the interval of chance of one of the basic events contributing to the top event,
is represented by the formula below:
𝐹𝑛 = [(𝑚𝑛 − 𝛼𝑛 + 𝛽𝑛 ) + (𝛼𝑛 − 𝛽𝑛 )𝜆, , (𝑚𝑛 + 𝛼𝑛 − 𝛽𝑛 ) − (𝛼𝑛 − 𝛽𝑛 )𝜆]
Here, m is the mean possibility for each event, α is the upper limit and β is the lower limit. λ
is an index representing whether to consider the fuzziness and randomness, which follows a
rule that λ∈ (0,1). When it is 1, the fuzziness is not considered. When it is 0, then it is fully
considered. Through the calculation mentioned above, the result of potential risk can be
obtained.

4. Result

According to the method part, the following formula can be seen below. The code for each
event is referring to table 5.
1. F11=1-(1-F6)*(1-F7)*(1-F8)*(1-F9)*(1-F10)

2. F6=1-(1-F1)*(1-F2)*(1-F3)

3. F10=1-(1-F5)*(1-F6)

And the value of the basic events can be seen in table 7.

Table.7 The value of basic events

Basic event code Fuzzy value
1 [0.0303, 0.0303]
2 [0.0472, 0.0472]
3 [0.0590, 0.0590]
4 (0.0076+0.0177λ, 0.0429-0.0177λ)
5 (0.0027+0.0040λ, 0.0106-0.0040λ)
7 (0.0081+0.0121λ, 0.0324-0.0121λ)
8 (0.0071+0.0165λ, 0.0400-0.0165λ)
9 (0.0076+0.0076λ, 0.0227-0.0076λ)
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In addition, the result of the top event can be seen in table 8.

Table.8 The result of top events

Top event code Fuzzy value
6 [0.1306, 0.1306]
10 (0.0102+0.0216λ, 0.0531-0.0214λ)
11 (0.1589+0.0480λ, 0.2527-0.0459λ)

Therefore, the potential risk for north east of China will be 20.7%, when the fuzz is not
considered. In other words, λ=1. When the fuzz is considered totally (λ=0), the potential risk
for north east will be an interval (15.89%, 25.27%).

5. Discussion

5.1 Meaning of the result

Unlike the example calculation did by Jian, et al. (2011), the result in this article means “If a
drinking water incident happened in China, what is the chance that the incident will happen
in north-east of China”. The reason causing such a difference is the different data, which can
be referred to 3.3 section. The value is quite close to the real situation in those decades, which
is about 25.6%. Therefore, it is relatively reasonable to say, if the data used in this method is
the predicted possibility of basic events, the result of potential risk will also be close to the
real risk.

5.2 Suggestion for the fuzzy fault tree method

During the process of fuzzy fault tree analysis, the hardest part might be collecting the data
and making predictions for each basic event based on this data. The reason for that might be
the lack of knowledge in evaluating drinking water incidents risks. If there are some convincing
methods to predict the chance of basic events, the result of this method will become
convincing either. Therefore, further study for this method might be establishing some criteria
to make predictions for the basic events.

Another effort can be considered is that, if a government applied some policies to prevent
the drinking water incidents, whether, and how, would this method reflect. In my opinion, the
policies should be considered as the criteria. Jian, et al. (2011) just used the historical data
and experts’ suggestions to predict the chance of basic events, which might make their study
ignore the efforts that people are paying to stop drinking water incidents.

5.3 Suggestion for local government in north-east area of China

According to the process, the key fault factor in this area is the pollution of source water.
Local governments may pay more attention to water source areas.

6. Conclusion

This article follows the idea raised by Jian, et al. (2011) to evaluate the potential risks of
drinking water incidents in north-east of China by fuzzy fault tree analysis. The result shows

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that (15.89%, 25.27%) drinking water incidents might happen in this area. Since the result is
close to the real value, this method seems to be useful if the data can be more widely accepted.
Some suggestions are offered for the method and local government after the calculations.

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