Monitoring Safety and Security of the SEPG Water Supply System

Real-time water quality monitoring is an emerging theme in drinking water supply. Chlorine analysers are commonly found at plant outputs, on tanks or rechlorination stations, but no parameters are generally measured in real time on the distribution network. This operational blindness is obviously problematic.

Beyond continuous monitoring of the measurements provided by these probes, it is necessary to implement efficient algorithms to automatically detect abnormal events on water quality (e.g. an accidental contamination). Once the detection is done, another objective is to examine the evolution of this event, in the network and in time, to evaluate its consequences; this exercise is possible using a hydraulic model.

SEPG and SEF actions related to security issues are therefore framed by the recommendations of the LPM and those of ANSSI (National Information Systems Security Agency) specific to the security of information systems. The security of supplied water quality commonly requires very specific and very expensive analysis devices and sensors, whose costs are generally between 50-100 k€, or even much more. A massive deployment of this type of equipment is therefore not feasible over a territory as large as that of SEPG, given the financial investment required.

Their use can therefore only be limited to the monitoring of areas deemed sensitive: hospitals, retirement homes, public or strategic buildings. It would be interesting to evaluate whether the use of SEPG multi-parameters probes could be a partial response to the water security ones (e.g. an intentional contamination), based on a simple and financially reasonable technical solution.