A multi agent-based approach for energy efficient water resource management

Abstract

Water supply remains one of globally recognised challenging problems due to the scarcity in the water sources, the environmental concerns and hardness in access to clean and fresh water. Besides, energy consumption is also under focus as much as access to fresh water is. Substantial research efforts have been spent to produce good solutions for each of these global problems. However, there is not much investigated on considering both issues together in the same problems structure. This paper focuses on efficient planning and control of water supply in a middle-size water-rich city using a multi-agent approach to handle the problem with respect to a number of key performance indicators including energy efficiency, given a variety of water resources including constructed and natural reservoirs. A particular case scenario is considered and its mathematical model is developed in order to optimally plan and control fresh water supply to the metropolitan area of the city introduced in the scenario. The multi agent system has been used for production control of untreated water from different water resources. The evaluations have been done through episodes and the results are encouraging.