Real-time monitoring and control for efficient management of drinking water networks: Barcelona case study

Trabajo presentado a la 11th International Conference on Hydroinformatics celebrada en New York (US) del 17 al 21 de agosto de 2014.This research has been partially funded by the DGR of Generalitat de Catalunya (SAC group Ref. 2009/SGR/1491), Doctorat Industrial AGAUR-2013-DI-041 and by EFFINET: Efficient Integrated Real-time Monitoring and Control of Drinking Water Networks (FP7-ICT2011-8-318556).Peer Reviewe

Optimal sensor placement for classifier-based leak localization in drinking water networks

© 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This paper presents a sensor placement method for classifier-based leak localization in Water Distribution Networks. The proposed approach consists in applying a Genetic Algorithm to decide the sensors to be used by a classifier (based on the k-Nearest Neighbor approach). The sensors are placed in an optimal way maximizing the accuracy of the leak localization. The results are illustrated by means of the application to the Hanoi District Metered Area and they are compared to the ones obtained by the Exhaustive Search Algorithm. A comparison with the results of a previous optimal sensor placement method is provided as well.Postprint (author's final draft

Modelling uncertainty for leak localization in Water Networks

The performance and success of model-based leak localization methods applied to water distribution networks (WDN) highly depends on the uncertainty of the system considered. This work proposes an original method of modeling the effect of uncertainties in these networks. The proposed method is based on the collection of real data in the water network in the absence of leaks. The discrepancy (residual) between the measured data and the one provided by a simulator of the network in normal operation is used to extrapolate the possible residuals in the different leak scenarios. In addition, indicators for assessing the effect of uncertainty in the performance of leak localization methods based on residual correlation analysis are provided. The error in terms of correlation intervals and leak localzation assessment between the proposed approximation and the real one is studied by means a simplified model of the WDN of Hanoi (Vietnam).Postprint (published version

Real-time monitoring and control for efficient management of drinking water networks: Barcelona case study

Drinking water utilities in urban areas are facing new challenges in their real-time operation: limited water resources, intensive energy requirements, a growing population, a costly and ageing infrastructure, increasingly stringent regulations, and increased attention towards the environmental impact of water use. The efficient use of resources is becoming a priority for water managers and the recent advances in ICT technologies can provide solutions to this end. Real-time management in water networks may be considered as a process comprising two different levels: (i) Monitoring, which is concerned with the observation and estimation of the current state of a system and the detection/diagnosis of abnormal situations. It is achieved through sensors and communications technology, together with mathematical models; and (ii) Control, related to computing and applying the best admissible control strategies for network actuators. Optimal control seeks to optimize a given set of operational goals related to the network performance, such as efficiency in resource use, environmental impact, etc. Real-time monitoring and control techniques can significantly improve the use of water and energy resources in water networks. This paper addresses the developments of the European project EFFINET, which proposes a novel integrated water resource management system based on advanced ICT technologies of automation and telecommunications for improving the efficiency of drinking water networks in terms of water use, energy consumption, water loss minimization, and water quality guarantees by addressing the real-time monitoring and control levels.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

On Real-Time Monitoring And Control For Efficient Management Of Drinking Water Networks: Barcelona Case Study

Drinking water utilities in urban areas are focused on finding smart solutions facing new challenges in their real-time operation because of limited water resources, intensive energy requirements, a growing population, a costly and ageing infrastructure, increasingly stringent regulations, and increased attention towards the environmental impact of water use. Such challenges force water managers to monitor and control not only water supply and distribution, but also consumer demand. This paper presents and discusses novel methodologies and procedures towards an integrated water resource management system based on advanced ICT technologies of automation and telecommunications for largely improving the efficiency of drinking water networks (DWN) in terms of water use, energy consumption, water loss minimization, and water quality guarantees. In particular, the paper addresses the first results of the European project EFFINET (FP7-ICT2011-8-318556) devoted to the monitoring and control of the DWN in Barcelona (Spain). Results are split in two levels according to different management objectives: (i) the monitoring level is concerned with all the aspects involved in the observation of the current state of a system and the detection/diagnosis of abnormal situations. It is achieved through sensors and communications technology, together with mathematical models; (ii) the control level is concerned with computing the best suitable and admissible control strategies for network actuators as to optimize a given set of operational goals related to the performance of the overall system. This level covers the network control (optimal management of water and energy) and the demand management (smart metering, efficient supply). The consideration of the Barcelona DWN as the case study will allow to prove the general applicability of the proposed integrated ICT solutions and their effectiveness in the management of DWN, with considerable savings of electricity costs and reduced water loss while ensuring the high European standards of water quality to citizens

Leakage discharge separation in multi-leaks pipe networks based on improved Independent Component Analysis with Reference (ICA-R) algorithm

The existing leakage assessment methods are not accurate and timely, making it difficult to meet the needs of water companies. In this paper, a methodology based on Independent Component Analysis with Reference (ICA-R) algorithm was proposed to give an more accurate estimation of leakage discharge in multi-leaks water distribution network without considering the specific individuality of one single leak. The proposed algorithm has been improved is improved to prevent error convergence in multi-leak pipe networks. Then an example EPANET model and a physical experimental platform were built to simulate and evaluate the flow in multi-leak WDNs, and the leakage flow rate is calculated by improved ICA-R algorithm and FastICA algorithm. The simulation results are shown the improved ICA-R algorithm has better performanc

Spectral Clustering And Support Vector Classification For Localizing Leakages In Water Distribution Networks – The ICeWater Project Approach

This paper presents a framework based on hydraulic simulation and machine learning for supporting Water Distribution Network (WDN) managers in localizing leakages, while reducing time and costs for investigation, intervention and rehabilitation. As a first step, hydraulic simulation is used to run different leakage scenarios by introducing a leak on each pipe, in turn, and varying its severity. As output of each scenario run, pressure and flow variations in correspondence of the actual monitoring points into the WDN, and with respect to the faultless model, are stored. Scenarios clustering is aimed at grouping together leaks generating similar effects, in terms of observable pressure and flow variations. This analysis is performed by creating a similarity graph, where nodes are scenarios and edges are weighted by the similarity between pairs of scenarios. Spectral clustering, a graph-clustering technique, is here proposed according to its usually higher performances with respect to traditional data-points clustering. Then each scenario is labeled with its cluster by obtaining a labeled dataset on which a Support Vector Machine (SVM) with RBF-kernel is trained. When an actual leak is detected, the variations in measured pressure and flow with respect to the faultless hydraulic model are given as input to the trained SVM which assigns them to a specific cluster, whose corresponding pipes are provided as the hydraulic components to check for leakage. Since spectral clustering induces a non-linear transformation, from Input Space (i.e., pressure and flow variations) to Feature Space (i.e., most relevant eigen-vectors) where clusters are obtained, the SVM encodes the non-linear relationship of pressure and flow variations with the scenarios cluster. The SVM is able to remap efficiently the results from spectral clustering toward the Input Space giving the probably leaky pipes even for pressure and flow variations not included in the simulated leakage scenarios

Modelling uncertainty for leak localization in Water Networks

The performance and success of model-based leak localization methods applied to water distribution networks (WDN) highly depends on the uncertainty of the system considered. This work proposes an original method of modeling the effect of uncertainties in these networks. The proposed method is based on the collection of real data in the water network in the absence of leaks. The discrepancy (residual) between the measured data and the one provided by a simulator of the network in normal operation is used to extrapolate the possible residuals in the different leak scenarios. In addition, indicators for assessing the effect of uncertainty in the performance of leak localization methods based on residual correlation analysis are provided. The error in terms of correlation intervals and leak localzation assessment between the proposed approximation and the real one is studied by means a simplified model of the WDN of Hanoi (Vietnam).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Sensors for Fluid Leak Detection

Fluid leak detection represents a problem that has attracted the interest of researchers, but not exclusively because in industries and services leaks are frequently common. Indeed, in water or gas supplies, chemical or thermal plants, sea-lines or cooling/heating systems leakage rates can cause important economic losses and sometimes, what it is more relevant, environmental pollution with human, animal or plant lives at risk. This last issue has led to increased national and international regulations with different degrees of severity regarding environmental conservation.[...