Abstract
Small leaks in water distribution networks have been a major problem both economically and environmentally, as they go undetected for years. We model the signature of small leaks as a unique Directed Acyclic Graph, called the Lean Graph, to find the best places for k sensors for detecting and locating small leaks. We use the sensors to develop dictionaries that map each leak signature to its location. We quantify leaks by matching out-of-normal flows detected by sensors against records in the selected dictionaries. The most similar records of the dictionaries are used to quantify the leaks. Finally, we investigate how much our approach can tolerate corrupted data due to sensor failures by introducing a subspace voting based quantification method. We tested our method on water distribution networks of literature and simulate small leaks ranging from [0.1, 1.0] liter per second. Our experimental results prove that our sensor placement strategy can effectively place k sensors to quantify single and multiple small leaks and can tolerate corrupted data up to some range while maintaining the performance of leak quantification. These outcomes indicate that our approach could be applied in real water distribution networks to minimize the loss caused by small leaks.
Highlights
A Water Distribution Network (WDN) is mainly used to distribute water from a reservoir through pipes to fulfil demands of residents
Partitioning a cluster is performed using the same clustering procedure, but with higher τ. This procedure results in smaller clusters with higher connectivity which contributes to the higher Partition Balance (PB) score
Each WDN represents different characteristics that are significant to our sensor placement strategy: the complexity of network structure, demands, connection degree and the number of tanks
Summary
A Water Distribution Network (WDN) is mainly used to distribute water from a reservoir through pipes to fulfil demands of residents. Small leaks are defined as leaks with excess flow ≤1 liter per second (lps) [1], while large leaks are defined as leaks with excess flow >1 lps. Both leaks are detected and localized by utilizing the readings of sensors, for example, pressure and flow sensors. Small leaks are hard to quantify because they do not cause significant changes in flows and pressures in a WDN. Large leaks are easier to quantify, even without the assistance of a sophisticated equipment. This is because large leaks cause significant changes in flows and pressures
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