Multiphase Procedure to Design District Metered Areas for Water Distribution Networks

Abstract

Dividing a water distribution network into subsystems can improve the efficiency and ease of achieving management goals. Subsystems or district metered areas (DMAs) are isolated control zones with a defined number of entrances and exits. This research presents an automatic approach based on graph theory, optimization, and a heuristic methodology to design DMAs for water systems by minimizing the coefficient of variation of demand similarity among DMAs. The multiphase procedure to design DMAs (MPPDMA) satisfies constraints specified to limit the number of entrances per DMA, meet maximum and minimum pressure at nonzero demand nodes, and maintain water levels of the tanks over extended periods of simulation. MPPDMA is applied to four water networks. The results demonstrate that MPPDMA can improve demand similarity among DMAs.