Abstract
Water supply systems of small municipalities usually have lots of facilities that are sparsely distributed over large areas and have to be inspected periodically. Unless efficient strategies are used, inspection costs of such water supply systems will be considerably high. In this study, a method for planning cost-effective patrol routes is developed. The minimum total patrol time with the constraint of daily working time was examined by using genetic algorithm. Since some of the facilities are sometimes located in undeveloped areas where access roads are likely to be damaged by natural disasters, the use of automatic analyzers for some facilities are investigated considering costs of analyzers and patrolling as well as reliability for natural disasters.
