Cost Evaluation of Meta- Heuristic Design Models for Urban Water Distribution Network

Water distribution networks are amongst the most important infrastructures of water supply projects, which attracts notable financial credits from the governments. As optimal design can significantly reduce the costs of such large projects, designers always try to minimize the costs while applying all the constraints and technical specifications of the project. Genetic algorithm is one of the most popular approaches for optimizations in the design projects. This research aims at evaluating the meta-heuristic methods used in designing the urban water distribution networks and to assess the genetic algorithm as an optimization mean for such methods. Given the heavy costs associated with water distribution network projects, it is very important how a model perform the cost evaluation. For the current study, the modeling was first performed by WaterGEMS software and the total cost was calculated based on the price list. Then, according to the objective function and cost criterion and with respect to constraints of speed and pressure in the network, optimization was performed and the final cost was obtained. The results of the proposed method showed that by optimization, the investment cost would decrease by about 14% compared to the original plan. Comparison was also made to other meta-heuristic algorithms which confirmed better performance of the proposed algorithm with regards to costs.