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Sustainability
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Sustainable Water Supply and Drainage Systems: Design, Modeling, and Reliability
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Sustainable Water Supply and Drainage Systems: Design, Modeling, and Reliability

A Special Issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050) belonging to the section "Sustainable Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 17 February 2027 | Viewed by 2755

Editor

Prof. Dr. Małgorzata Iwanek

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Water Supply and Wastewater Disposal, Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Energy, Lublin University of Technology, Nadbystrzycka 40B, 20-618 Lublin, Poland
Interests: water supply; wastewater and stormwater systems; sustainable water management; buried pipelines–soil interactions; flow in porous media

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable water supply and drainage systems play a crucial role in ensuring public health, environmental protection, and socio-economic development. Growing urbanization, climate change, aging infrastructure, and increasing demands for water services pose significant challenges to the design, operation, and long-term reliability of water-related infrastructure systems. Addressing these challenges requires innovative engineering solutions, advanced modelling approaches, and integrated management strategies grounded in sustainability principles.

This Special Issue focuses on sustainable water supply and drainage systems, emphasizing their design, modelling, and reliability assessment. It aims to bring together recent scientific advances related to water distribution networks, wastewater and stormwater systems, and their interactions with the soil–groundwater environment. Particular attention is given to system resilience, risk assessment, failure analysis, and methods for improving operational safety and reliability under changing environmental and urban conditions.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: innovative and sustainable design of water supply and drainage systems; hydraulic and hydrological modelling; reliability, vulnerability, and resilience assessment of water infrastructure; failure detection and classification; leakage and infiltration processes; soil–water–infrastructure interactions; smart monitoring systems; and decision-support tools for sustainable water management.

We welcome original research articles, review papers, and case studies employing theoretical analyses, numerical modelling, laboratory and field investigations, and practical engineering applications. By bringing together contributions from diverse disciplines, this Special Issue seeks to support the development of reliable, resilient, and sustainable water supply and drainage systems in line with the goals of Sustainability and sustainable water management.

We warmly invite you to submit your latest work to this Special Issue and contribute to advancing sustainable water infrastructure solutions.

Prof. Dr. Małgorzata Iwanek
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable water management
  • water supply systems
  • drainage and stormwater systems
  • infrastructure reliability
  • system resilience
  • failure analysis
  • hydraulic and hydrological modelling
  • smart monitoring and decision support

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 15368 KB  
Article
Hidden Risks to Sustainable Operation of Water Systems: Suffosion Process Triggered by Pipe Leakage
by Małgorzata Iwanek
Sustainability 2026, 18(15), 7593; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18157593 - 26 Jul 2026
Viewed by 347
Abstract
Failures and leakages in water distribution pipelines affect the sustainable operation of water supply systems. While water losses caused by leaks are widely recognized, their impact on soil stability and internal erosion processes remains insufficiently investigated. This study examines water flow velocity distributions [...] Read more.
Failures and leakages in water distribution pipelines affect the sustainable operation of water supply systems. While water losses caused by leaks are widely recognized, their impact on soil stability and internal erosion processes remains insufficiently investigated. This study examines water flow velocity distributions in soil around leaking water pipes regarding suffosion risk. Numerical simulations were performed using the FEFLOW software for four scenarios combining two pipe diameters and two internal pressure levels. Each scenario assumed circumferential leakage with continuous water outflow into the surrounding soil. The numerical model was validated through field experiments conducted on four experimental setups. The simulation results showed that flow velocities near the pipe exceeded critical values in all scenarios, indicating a risk of suffosion. Although hydraulic pressure and leakage area significantly affected local flow velocities, their influence on the extent of the potential suffosion zone was negligible. In all cases, the zone where critical velocities were exceeded extended more than 1.5 m from the leakage location. The results highlight the importance of considering suffosion risk in the operation and risk assessment of sustainable water supply systems. They also indicate that this hazard should be taken into account during the design stage, particularly when selecting pipeline routes and assessing ground conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Water Supply and Drainage Systems: Design, Modeling, and Reliability)
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15 pages, 1182 KB  
Article
Classification of Water Pipe Damage Types Using Random Forest
by Małgorzata Kutyłowska and Wojciech Cieżak
Sustainability 2026, 18(10), 5101; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18105101 - 19 May 2026
Viewed by 406
Abstract
This study presents the results of a classification of the types of water supply pipe failures using a random forest model consisting of 72 trees. The modeling was done in Statistica software. The classification accuracy was compared with earlier results obtained from single-classification-tree [...] Read more.
This study presents the results of a classification of the types of water supply pipe failures using a random forest model consisting of 72 trees. The modeling was done in Statistica software. The classification accuracy was compared with earlier results obtained from single-classification-tree models. The qualitative-dependent variable was the type of failure (corrosion, crack, sealing). The predictors included quantitative variables (diameter, year of construction) as well as qualitative variables (pipe type and material). The choice of 72 trees was made based on an analysis of the misclassification rate (31%) during the training stage. Increasing the number of trees forming the forest did not produce more accurate classification results: for the test set, the accuracy was 82%, 72%, and 37% for corrosion, crack, and sealing failures, respectively. The trees forming the random forest differed in their structure both in terms of the number of split and terminal nodes, as well as in the depth and number of levels of individual trees. The overall classification accuracy for the test set was nearly 66%, which is a better result than in the earlier analyses based on single trees. The proposed approach also aligns with the currently promoted concept of the sustainable operation of critical infrastructure. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Water Supply and Drainage Systems: Design, Modeling, and Reliability)
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