Water supply network pollution source identification by random forest algorithm

A novel approach for identifying the source of contamination in a water supply network based on the random forest classifying algorithm is presented in this paper. The proposed method is tested on two different water distribution benchmark networks with different sensor placements. For each considered network, a considerable amount of contamination scenarios with randomly selected contamination parameters were simulated and water quality time series of network sensors were obtained. Pollution scenarios were defined by randomly generated pollution source location, pollution starting time, duration of injection and the chemical intensity of the pollutant. Sensor layout's influence, demand uncertainty and imperfect sensor measurements were also investigated to verify the robustness of the method. The proposed approach shows high accuracy in localizing the potential sources of pollution, thus greatly reducing the complexity of the water supply network contamination detection problem.