Criteria, objectives and methodologies for water network partitioning

Abstract

Water distribution networks are complex infrastructures characterized by very large dimensions (meshed networks with thousands of nodes) and reduced accessibility (generally they are buried underground). These peculiarities make it particularly difficult to manage and show numerous criticalities; at the same time, water distribution networks represent one of the main subsystems of smart cities. The paradigm “divide et impera” is a valid technique to improve the management and facilitate the maintenance, the water balance estimation, the water leakage detection and the pressures control. On this side, Water network District Metering (WDM), a method developed in England, and already implemented in many countries, represents a modern technique to organize urban water systems, offering new perspectives for design, management and maintenance. The WDM is recommended as one of the best practice to limit the huge amount of dispersed water in urban networks, simplifying water leakage detection, carrying out pressure management, improving water system management and monitoring of district hydraulic data. On this subject, the authors developed a specific software (SWANP 3.0) for water network partitioning that integrates the main optimization algorithms. This paper shows the main aspects of water network partitioning summarizing the principal recently proposed techniques in the literature aimed to find the best partitioning layout from an economic and performance point of view.