This paper presents a novel concept of adaptive water distribution networks with dynamically reconfigurable topology for optimal pressure control, leakage management and improved system resilience. The implementation of District Meter Areas (DMAs) has greatly assisted water utilities in reducing leakage. DMAs segregate water networks into small areas, the flow in and out of each area is monitored and thresholds are derived from the minimum night flow to trigger the leak localization. A major drawback of the DMA approach is the reduced redundancy in network connectivity which has a severe impact on network resilience, incident management and water quality deterioration. The presented approach for adaptively reconfigurable networks integrates the benefits of DMAs for managing leakage with the advantages of large-scale looped networks for increased redundancy in connectivity, reliability and resilience. Self-powered multi-function network controllers are designed and integrated with novel telemetry tools for high-speed time-synchronized monitoring of the dynamic hydraulic conditions. A computationally efficient and robust optimization method based on sequential convex programming is developed and applied for the dynamic topology reconfiguration and pressure control of water distribution networks. An investigation is carried out using an operational network to evaluate the implementation and benefits of the proposed method.
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Research Article|
May 19 2014
Adaptive water distribution networks with dynamically reconfigurable topology
Robert Wright;
Robert Wright
1InfraSense Labs, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK
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Ivan Stoianov;
1InfraSense Labs, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK
E-mail: [email protected]
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Panos Parpas;
Panos Parpas
2Department of Computing, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK
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Kevin Henderson;
Kevin Henderson
3Bristol Water Ltd, Bridgwater Road, Bristol BS99 7AU, UK
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John King
John King
4Cla-Val UK Ltd, Dainton House, 107 Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells TN1 2DH, UK
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Journal of Hydroinformatics (2014) 16 (6): 1280–1301.
Article history
Received:
July 13 2013
Accepted:
April 20 2014
Citation
Robert Wright, Ivan Stoianov, Panos Parpas, Kevin Henderson, John King; Adaptive water distribution networks with dynamically reconfigurable topology. Journal of Hydroinformatics 1 November 2014; 16 (6): 1280–1301. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/hydro.2014.086
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