Over the last few years, U.S. EPA’s Water Security Division has been developing guidance products to help utilities establish Surveillance and Response Systems (SRS) – systems that monitor and manage distribution system water quality and facilitate response activities. Specifically, SRS can detect and respond to intentional and unintentional contamination incidents. SRS can also provide many benefits to routine utility operations.
SRS components are grouped into two operational phases: surveillance and response. The surveillance components provide real-time data on conditions throughout the distribution system and include online water quality monitoring, enhanced security monitoring, customer complaint surveillance and public health surveillance. The response components provide a framework for making response decisions and include consequence management and sampling & analysis.
EPA has produced several guides to help utilities build or enhance their systems. The most recent include:
Designing Communications Systems
This guide can help utilities select an appropriate communications system to support the operation of SRS. It provides rigorous criteria for evaluating communications system options and common technologies, describes the process for establishing requirements for a communications system and provides guidance on selecting and implementing a system. (Sept. 2016)
Online Monitoring of Source Water Quality
This guide can help utilities design a source water monitoring system using online water quality instrumentation. The document provides guidance on selection of water quality parameters and monitoring locations, design of monitoring stations and information management systems, and development of procedures for the investigation of and response to unusual source water quality. (Sept. 2016)
Public Health Surveillance Design
This guide can help utilities work with their public health partners to implement Public Health Surveillance (PHS) as a component of SRS. The document describes the roles and responsibilities of common public health partners, provides recommendations for establishing relationships with those partners, describes common public health surveillance systems and provides guidance for developing a PHS alert investigation procedure. (July 2016)
These and other guides can be found on EPA's SRS webpages. Also available are comprehensive lists of existing and future resources.