Reliability analysis of water supply systems by the entropy and equivocation theory

The entropy of a water supply system is a measure of the degree of fragmentation and uniformity of flow distribution among paths between sources and release points. It has been used as a surrogate measure of the system reliability, since it is related inversely with the worst impacts of possible interruptions of supply paths. However, the ordinary entropy refers only to the reliability of the scheme of the system and of the flow distribution, but it doesn't account for the specific reliability of each link. The "equivocation" concept, borrowed from the Shannon Theory of Communication as the entropy concept itself, allows to account for the unreliability of each component of the water system, so as in communication theory it accounts for the reduction of the information content of a communication system when it is perturbed by noise.