Model-based leak detection and location in water distribution networks considering an extended-horizon analysis of pressure sensitivities

In this paper, we propose a new approach for model-based leak detection and location in water distribution networks (WDN), which considers an extended time-horizon analysis of pressure sensitivities. Five different ways of using the leak sensitivity matrix to isolate the leaks are described and compared. The first method is based on the binarization approach. The second, third and fourth methods are based on the comparison of the measured pressure vectors with the leak sensitivity matrix using different metrics: correlation, angle between vectors and Euclidean distance, respectively. The fifth method is based on the least square optimization method. The performance of these methods is compared when applied to two academic small networks (Hanoi and Quebra) widely used in the literature. Finally, the three methods with better performance are applied to a district metering area of the Barcelona WDN using real data.