To analyze the reliability of water distribution networks (WDNs) more precisely

taking account of the supply-demand relationship between demand nodes and water sources

a method was proposed for pipe vulnerability assessment of WDNs based on weighted edge betweenness (WEB). First

the demand proportions of all demand nodes and the supply proportions of all water sources were used to determine the total importance weight of the K shortest paths between the demand nodes and the water sources

and then an importance weight was allocated to each of these paths according to their resistance. The WEB indicator of a pipe was defined as the sum of the importance weights of all K shortest paths passing through it

which can be used to evaluate its vulnerability. Using four indicators i.e.

WEB

classical edge betweenness

demand shortfall ratio

and water age increment ratio

two WDNs with different properties were evaluated and compared. Experimental results show that WEB could better screen out fragile pipes than classical edge betweenness. Deliberate attack simulations for the two WDNs show that using WEB attack strategy could make WDNs fail faster compared with classical edge betweenness attack strategy

which indicates that WEB has higher sensitivity. Network optimization experiments based on WEB further verified its guiding effect for improving the robustness of WDNs.