Fire and drinking water capacity enhancement in water distribution networks

The purpose of the present study is to introduce a newly developed capacity increment (also pressure sensitivity reduction) technique in the case of drinking water distribution systems (WDS). The main novelty of this method is based on a correlation between two parameters of the water distribution network – one characterises its robustness in a topology-specific way, the other can be calculated with only one hydraulic simulation. With the help of connection the topology optimisation – the identification of the optimal place for installing a new pipe – can be determined within a short processing time, and without the implementation of a stochastic optimiser algorithm. The first part of the paper presents problems caused by high pressure sensitivity and introduces the mathematical background of the method, besides which it discusses the details of the algorithm. After that, the second part presents the results gained by the implementation of the method in two case studies: real-life water distribution systems of a small and a medium-sized town. For the small town, verification is possible by comparing the result of our method with the total hydraulic evaluation of the WDS.