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A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 May 2018) | Viewed by 51824

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Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Pezzinga

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Guest Editor

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Architettura, Università di Catania, Via Santa Sofia, 64, 95123 Catania, Italia
Interests: water distribution networks; unsteady flow; optimization; computational hydraulics

Prof. Dr. Enrico Creaco

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Civil Engineering, Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy
Interests: water distribution modelling; urban drainage modelling; real-time control; sediment transport in sewers; sustainable solutions for urban drainage systems; flood control in urban areas
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleauges,

The research on water distribution networks has recently been characterized by a deep renewal and development, due to technical progress in control systems and computational resources. In the last few decades, the research has deepened the well established topics related to the quantitative simulation and optimization of water distribution systems, and it has broadened to water quality aspects, such as those concerning the network capacity in terms of residual disinfection and its protection from the effects of accidental or terroristic contamination events.

This Special Issue aims to point out the recent trends on water distribution modeling, regarding the opportunities introduced by technical progress for the simulation, design, and management of water distribution systems. Contributions are welcome on the following topics: simulation and optimization of water distribution systems, including pressure driven models, leakage detection and control, operation, pipe design, control valves, micro-turbines, pump scheduling, energy optimization, etc.; unsteady flow simulation, including unsteady friction, viscoelastic pipe behavior, transient cavitating flow, etc.; and water quality, including optimal placement of sensors for contaminant detection, reaction to contamination, network recovery after contamination, etc.

Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Pezzinga
Dr. Enrico Creaco
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

optimization
design
leakage
pressure control
energy
unsteady flow
friction
viscoelasticity
cavitation
water quality
protection from contamination

Published Papers (11 papers)

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Editorial

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8 pages, 215 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Advances in Water Distribution Networks

by Enrico Creaco and Giuseppe Pezzinga

Water 2018, 10(11), 1546; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10111546 - 30 Oct 2018

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2885

Abstract

This Editorial presents a representative collection of 10 papers, presented in the Special Issue on Advances in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs), and frames them in the current research trends. Four topics are mainly explored: simulation and optimization modelling, topology and partitioning, water quality, and service effectiveness. As for the first topic, the following aspects are dealt with: pressure-driven formulations, algorithms for the optimal location of control valves to minimize leakage, benefits of water discharge prediction for the remote real time control (RTC) of valves, and transients generated by pumps operating as turbines (PATs). In the context of the second topic, a topological taxonomy of WDNs is presented, and partitioning methods for the creation of district metered areas (DMAs) are compared. With regards to the third topic, the vulnerability to trihalomethane is assessed, and a statistical optimization model is presented to minimise heavy metal releases. Finally, the fourth topic focusses on estimation of non-revenue water (NRW), inclusive of leakage and unauthorized consumption, and on assessment of service under intermittent supply conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

Research

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13 pages, 277 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Developing a Statistical Model to Improve Drinking Water Quality for Water Distribution System by Minimizing Heavy Metal Releases

by Wei Peng and Rene V. Mayorga

Water 2018, 10(7), 939; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10070939 - 14 Jul 2018

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2940

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel statistical approach for blending source waters in a public water distribution system to improve water quality (WQ) by minimizing the release of heavy metals (HMR). Normally, introducing a new source changes the original balanced environment and causes adverse effects on the WQ in a water distribution system. One harmful consequence of blending source water is the release of heavy metals, including lead, copper and iron. Most HMR studies focus on the forecasting of unfavorable effects using precise and complicated nonlinear equations. This paper uses a statistical multiple objectives optimization, namely Multiple Source Waters Blending Optimization (MSWBO), to find optimal blending ratios of source waters for minimizing three HMRs in a water supply system. In this paper, three response surface equations are applied to describe the reaction kinetics of HMR, and three dual response surface equations are used to track the standard deviations of the three response surface equations. A weighted sum method is performed for the multi-objective optimization problem to minimize three HMRs simultaneously. Finally, the experimental data of a pilot distribution system is used in the proposed statistical approach to demonstrate the model’s applicability, computational efficiency, and robustness. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

15 pages, 4995 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Vulnerability Assessment to Trihalomethane Exposure in Water Distribution Systems

by Claudia Quintiliani, Cristiana Di Cristo and Angelo Leopardi

Water 2018, 10(7), 912; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10070912 - 10 Jul 2018

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 3290

Abstract

Chlorination is an effective and cheap disinfectant for preventing waterborne diseases-causing microorganisms, but its compounds tend to react with the natural organic matter (NOM), forming potentially harmful and unwanted disinfection by-products (DBPs) such as trihalomethanes (THMs), haloacetic acids (HAAs), and others. The present paper proposes a methodology for estimating the vulnerability with respect to users’ exposure to DPBs in water distribution systems (WDSs). The presented application considers total THMs (TTHMs) concentration, but the methodology can be used also for other types of DPBs. Five vulnerability indexes are adopted that furnish different kinds of information about the exposure. The methodology is applied to five case studies, and the results suggest that the introduced indexes identify different critical areas in respect to elevated concentrations of TTHMs. In this way, the use of the proposed methodology allows identifying the higher risk nodes with respect to the different kinds of exposure, whether it is a short period of exposure to high TTHMs values, or chronic exposure to low concentrations. The application of the methodology furnishes useful information for an optimal WDS management, for planning system modifications and district sectorization taking into account water quality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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17 pages, 7816 KiB

Open AccessArticle

PATs Operating in Water Networks under Unsteady Flow Conditions: Control Valve Manoeuvre and Overspeed Effect

by Modesto Pérez-Sánchez, P. Amparo López-Jiménez and Helena M. Ramos

Water 2018, 10(4), 529; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10040529 - 23 Apr 2018

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4540

Abstract

The knowledge of transient conditions in water pressurized networks equipped with pump as turbines (PATs) is of the utmost importance and necessary for the design and correct implementation of these new renewable solutions. This research characterizes the water hammer phenomenon in the design of PAT systems, emphasizing the transient events that can occur during a normal operation. This is based on project concerns towards a stable and efficient operation associated with the normal dynamic behaviour of flow control valve closure or by the induced overspeed effect. Basic concepts of mathematical modelling, characterization of control valve behaviour, damping effects in the wave propagation and runaway conditions of PATs are currently related to an inadequate design. The precise evaluation of basic operating rules depends upon the system and component type, as well as the required safety level during each operation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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14 pages, 5298 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Comparison of Pressure-Driven Formulations for WDN Simulation

by Carlo Ciaponi and Enrico Creaco

Water 2018, 10(4), 523; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10040523 - 21 Apr 2018

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 3720

Abstract

This paper presents the comparison of five pressure-driven formulations in the context of water distribution network (WDN) modelling. These formulations, which relate nodal outflow q to users to demands d and nodal pressure heads h, were implemented inside the global gradient algorithm for the snapshot solution of the equations concerning mass and energy conservation at WDN nodes and pipes, respectively. The modelling of leakage nodal outflows as a function of pressure was also considered. The applications concerned two case studies, in which nodal demands were suitably amplified to lower service pressure below the desired values. This was done to stress the effects of the pressure-driven dependence q(h) in the WDN. The results showed that the formulations tend to behave similarly in terms of nodal outflows. Compared to a widely used formulation, which features a q(h) relationship with derivative discontinuities, the other four formulations analyzed tend to guarantee faster algorithm convergence, above all for simple and poorly interconnected WDNs, due to their smooth q(h) relationship. The results in terms of nodal pressure heads can be very different, above all for low values of h. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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13 pages, 1262 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Comparison of Algorithms for the Optimal Location of Control Valves for Leakage Reduction in WDNs

by Enrico Creaco and Giuseppe Pezzinga

Water 2018, 10(4), 466; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10040466 - 12 Apr 2018

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 3124

Abstract

The paper presents the comparison of two different algorithms for the optimal location of control valves for leakage reduction in water distribution networks (WDNs). The former is based on the sequential addition (SA) of control valves. At the generic step N_val of SA, the search for the optimal combination of N_val valves is carried out, while containing the optimal combination of N_val − 1 valves found at the previous step. Therefore, only one new valve location is searched for at each step of SA, among all the remaining available locations. The latter algorithm consists of a multi-objective genetic algorithm (GA), in which valve locations are encoded inside individual genes. For the sake of consistency, the same embedded algorithm, based on iterated linear programming (LP), was used inside SA and GA, to search for the optimal valve settings at various time slots in the day. The results of applications to two WDNs show that SA and GA yield identical results for small values of N_val. When this number grows, the limitations of SA, related to its reduced exploration of the research space, emerge. In fact, for higher values of N_val, SA tends to produce less beneficial valve locations in terms of leakage abatement. However, the smaller computation time of SA may make this algorithm preferable in the case of large WDNs, for which the application of GA would be overly burdensome. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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19 pages, 2349 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Topological Taxonomy of Water Distribution Networks

by Carlo Giudicianni, Armando Di Nardo, Michele Di Natale, Roberto Greco, Giovanni Francesco Santonastaso and Antonio Scala

Water 2018, 10(4), 444; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10040444 - 08 Apr 2018

Cited by 70 | Viewed by 5921

Abstract

Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) can be regarded as complex networks and modeled as graphs. In this paper, Complex Network Theory is applied to characterize the behavior of WDNs from a topological point of view, reviewing some basic metrics, exploring their fundamental properties and the relationship between them. The crucial aim is to understand and describe the topology of WDNs and their structural organization to provide a novel tool of analysis which could help to find new solutions to several arduous problems of WDNs. The aim is to understand the role of the topological structure in the WDNs functioning. The methodology is applied to 21 existing networks and 13 literature networks. The comparison highlights some topological peculiarities and the possibility to define a set of best design parameters for ex-novo WDNs that could also be used to build hypothetical benchmark networks retaining the typical structure of real WDNs. Two well-known types of network ((a) square grid; and (b) random graph) are used for comparison, aiming at defining a possible mathematical model for WDNs. Finally, the interplay between topology and some performance requirements of WDNs is discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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12 pages, 8561 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Comparing Topological Partitioning Methods for District Metered Areas in the Water Distribution Network

by Haixing Liu, Mengke Zhao, Chi Zhang and Guangtao Fu

Water 2018, 10(4), 368; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10040368 - 23 Mar 2018

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3844

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of three partitioning methods, including Fast Greedy, Random Walk, and Metis, which are commonly used to establish the district metered areas (DMAs) in water distribution systems. The performance of the partitioning methods is compared using a spectrum of evaluation indicators, including modularity, conductance, density, expansion, cuts, and communication volume, which measure different topological characteristics of the complex network. A complex water distribution network EXNET is used for comparison considering two cases, i.e., unweighted and weighted edges, where the weights are represented by the demands. The results obtained from the case study network show that the Fast Greedy has a good overall performance. Random Walk can obtain the relative small cut edges, but severely sacrifice the balance of the partitions, in particular when the number of partitions is small. The Metis method has good performance on balancing the size of the clusters. The Fast Greedy method is more effective in the weighted graph partitioning. This study provides an insight for the application of the topology-based partitioning methods to establish district metered areas in a water distribution network. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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3739 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Estimation of Non-Revenue Water Ratio Using MRA and ANN in Water Distribution Networks

by Dongwoo Jang and Gyewoon Choi

Water 2018, 10(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10010002 - 21 Dec 2017

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 8150

Abstract

The non-revenue water (NRW) ratio in water distribution networks is the ratio of losses from unbilled authorized consumption and apparent and real losses to the total water supply. NRW is an important parameter for prioritizing the improvement of a water distribution system and identifying the influencing parameters. Though the method using multiple regression analysis (MRA) is a statistical analysis method for estimating the NRW ratio using the main parameters of a water distribution system, it has disadvantages in that the accuracy is low compared to the measured NRW ratio. In this study, an artificial neural network (ANN) was applied to estimate the NRW ratio to improve assessment accuracy and suggest an efficient methodology to identify related parameters of the NRW ratio. When using an ANN with the optimal number of neurons, the accuracy of estimation was higher than that of conventional statistical methods, as with MRA. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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2035 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Exploring Numerically the Benefits of Water Discharge Prediction for the Remote RTC of WDNs

by Enrico Creaco

Water 2017, 9(12), 961; https://doi.org/10.3390/w9120961 - 09 Dec 2017

Cited by 23 | Viewed by 3290

Abstract

This paper explores numerically the benefits of water discharge prediction in the real time control (RTC) of water distribution networks (WDNs). An algorithm aimed at controlling the settings of control valves and variable speed pumps, as a function of pressure head signals from remote nodes in the network, is used. Two variants of the algorithm are considered, based on the measured water discharge in the device at the current time and on the prediction of this variable at the new time, respectively. As a result of the prediction, carried out using a polynomial with coefficients determined through linear regression, the RTC algorithm attempts to correct the expected deviation of the controlled pressure head from the set point, rather than the currently measured deviation. The applications concerned the numerical simulation of RTC in a WDN, in which the nodal demands are reconstructed stochastically through the bottom-up approach. The results prove that RTC benefits from the implementation of the prediction, in terms of the closeness of the controlled variable to the set point and of total variations of the device setting. The benefits are more evident when the water discharge features contained random fluctuations and large hourly variations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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Review

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24 pages, 3252 KiB

Open AccessReview

Building a Methodology for Assessing Service Quality under Intermittent Domestic Water Supply

by Assia Mokssit, Bernard De Gouvello, Aurélie Chazerain, François Figuères and Bruno Tassin

Water 2018, 10(9), 1164; https://doi.org/10.3390/w10091164 - 30 Aug 2018

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 7628

Abstract

This document proposes a methodology for assessing the quality of water distribution service in the context of intermittent supply, based on a comparison of joint results from literature reviews and feedback from drinking water operators who had managed these networks, with standards for defining the quality of drinking water service. The paper begins by reviewing and proposing an analysis of the definition and characterization of intermittent water supply (IWS), highlighting some important findings. The diversity of approaches used to address the issue and the difficulty of defining a precise and detailed history of water supply in the affected systems broadens the spectrum of intermittency characterization and the problems it raises. The underlined results are then used to structure an evaluation framework for the water service and to develop improvement paths defined in the intermittent networks. The resulting framework highlights the means available to water stakeholders to assess their operational and management performance in achieving the improvement objectives defined by the environmental and socio-economic contexts in which the network operates. Practical examples of intermittent system management are collected from water system operators and presented for illustration purposes (Jeddah, Algiers, Port-au-Prince, Amman, Cartagena, Barranquilla, Mexico, Cancun, Saltillo, Mumbai, Delhi, Coimbatore …). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Water Distribution Networks)

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