Read the following passage carefully.
To address the chronic issue of non-revenue water—clean water lost to undetected pipeline leaks—the Ministry of Urban Affairs has initiated the pilot deployment of the National Subterranean Acoustic Network (NSAN). Traditionally, municipal water authorities relied on reactive maintenance, waiting for visible surface flooding or significant pressure drops before dispatching repair crews. The NSAN shifts this paradigm by deploying highly sensitive acoustic sensors at 500-meter intervals along primary distribution mains, exclusively in zones constructed before 1990. These sensors are calibrated to detect the high-frequency hiss of pressurized water escaping through micro-fissures, transmitting anomaly data to a centralized machine learning dashboard.
While proponents herald NSAN as a definitive solution to urban water scarcity, the directive explicitly mandates that the acoustic data cannot be the sole basis for excavation. Before breaking ground, maintenance protocols require cross-verification using localized ground-penetrating radar. Furthermore, the acoustic sensors are currently ineffective in pipelines utilizing High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE), which absorb rather than transmit the specific sound frequencies monitored by the system. Consequently, the NSAN framework serves not as a standalone diagnostic tool, but as an early-warning prioritization system designed to focus secondary verification resources on high-probability leak zones, specifically within aging metallic infrastructure. Municipalities hoping to completely replace their physical inspection teams with automated alerts have been cautioned that NSAN’s implementation requires a concurrent upskilling of the existing workforce to interpret complex acoustic signatures, ensuring that false positives—often triggered by nearby subway vibrations or heavy surface traffic—do not lead to unnecessary and costly road closures.
Based on the NSAN framework detailed in the passage, which of the following administrative actions represents a valid application of the policy?
- AA municipal authority automatically dispatches excavation machinery to break ground the moment an NSAN sensor detects a high-frequency hiss, aiming to minimize water loss as quickly as possible.
- BA local government completely replaces its physical inspection workforce with the automated machine learning dashboard in order to significantly reduce municipal labor costs.
- CAn administrative tribunal bans the use of NSAN technology, ruling that the sensors are fundamentally flawed because they frequently register heavy surface traffic and subway vibrations as pipeline leaks.
- A city water director prioritizes deploying NSAN sensors in cast-iron pipeline districts built in the 1980s, while allocating ground-penetrating radar teams to cross-verify any acoustic anomalies detected.Answer