Designing District Metered Areas with Cost Reduction and Reduction of Leakage Approach in Water Distribution Networks

To estimate the rate of leakage in the water distribution networks, the International Water Association recommends measuring the rate of night flow by creating District-Metered Areas (DMAs). However, in creating DMAs, especially for the existing and old WDNs, minimizing the boundary pipes between the DMAs, leakage, cost, and stable hydraulics should be taken into account. The layout should be optimally designed regarding geometry and the optimum number. In this study, the results of two-objective algorithms have been compared in creating DMAs. NSGAII, MOGWO, SPEA2, and MOPSO algorithms are used to select the best optimization algorithm in the physical partitioning. The results showed that the SPEA2 algorithm performs better than other algorithms. By examining the creation of different DMAs by changing the number and geometry of the areas in the networks, the optimal case of the areas was calculated according to two optimization goals, as well as different indicators such as modularity and nodal pressure values.

This study presents a new method to create DMAs in the existing water distribution network with cost and leakage reduction approaches. The creation of areas with these two approaches has yet to be investigated in past studies. This method includes the phases of clustering, physical partitioning, and analysis of the results. The presented method was used on the ZJ water distribution network in China. Also, the results of the two-objective algorithms have been compared for the first time in creating DMAs.

The results showed that the standard deviation of the nodal pressure of the network has decreased by 14.8% and the nodal leakage rate of the network by 5.8% compared to the case without creating DMAs. In addition to controlling leakage in the network, the creation of DMAs has led to pressure management and leakage reduction in the water distribution network.

The presented method creates DMAs with the lowest cost and rate of leakage and pressure control in helping justice of the water distribution network. Also, the SPEA2 two-objective algorithm is suggested as the best algorithm for creating DMAs among the four reviewed algorithms.