Abstract
Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) represent spatially organized infrastructures, whose main function is to deliver water from hydraulic sources to meet the customers’ demands and pressure requirements of the system through interconnected pipes. The time-varying water demands and the asset deterioration greatly contribute to the complexity in WDNs. Therefore, little changes of the structural layout expose the system to higher variations of WDN functioning, sometimes unpredictable to evaluate due to uncertainties of the hydraulic conditions, affecting WDNs control and management. The Complex Network Theory (CNT) has been recognized to provide a wide range of metrics for identifying the WDNs emergent behavior, only based on the analysis of the topological domain, even before using hydraulic models. This contribution deals with the application of several tailored centrality metrics, such as betweenness and edge betweenness, accounting for various combinations of the intrinsic relevance of the spatial elements of the systems, for identifying the emergent domain behavior of WDNs. The analysis has been applied to each subnetwork of a large real WDN, aimed at providing helpful indications for hydraulic model validation, identification of main pipes for improving the calibration of the system, maintenance works as well as relevance of main flow paths to plan operations.
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