On the Complexities of the Design of Water Distribution Networks

Joaquín Izquierdo, Idel Montalvo, Rafael Pérez-García and Agustín Matías

Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2012, vol. 2012, 1-25

Abstract:

Water supply is one of the most recognizable and important public services contributing to quality of life. Water distribution networks (WDNs) are extremely complex assets. A number of complex tasks, such as design, planning, operation, maintenance, and management, are inherently associated with such networks. In this paper, we focus on the design of a WDN, which is a wide and open problem in hydraulic engineering. This problem is a large-scale combinatorial, nonlinear, nonconvex, multiobjective optimization problem, involving various types of decision variables and many complex implicit constraints. To handle this problem, we provide a synergetic association between swarm intelligence and multiagent systems where human interaction is also enabled. This results in a powerful collaborative system for finding solutions to such a complex hydraulic engineering problem. All the ingredients have been integrated into a software tool that has also been shown to efficiently solve problems from other engineering fields.

Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hin:jnlmpe:947961

DOI: 10.1155/2012/947961

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