A reliability-based approach to maximize availability in a water supply system

In some regions where the water supply system is deficient and unable to supply all consumers simultaneously, the appropriate maintenance management allows to improve the system's availability. As the maintenance activities, either preventive or corrective, represents system's service disruption, non-accurate maintenance schedules may reduce system's availability. In such context, availability has to be optimized even if it results in higher costs due to the water supply system deficiencies to increase the hours of water supply. This paper presents a real situation that is found in many undeveloped countries and proposes a model to maximize the availability of a water supply system. From a reliability perspective, the behavior of system failures is studied and subsequently the availability is optimized considering preventive and corrective maintenance actions. To illustrate the approach proposed in this paper, a case study is presented with an application of the model in a system supplied by a water well, allowing quantify the system's reliability and reduce its downtime.