Simultaneous Hydraulic and Quality Model Calibration of a Real-World Water Distribution Network

Abstract

Hydraulic and quality models are widely used in water distribution networks (WDNs) for assisting network analysis, design, and operation. In a calibrated model, the difference between the simulated and measured data reaches an acceptable error level. In this study, to calibrate the hydraulic and quality model of the network, the pressure and residual chlorine levels were measured initially during 2-h steps in the network. Furthermore, the bulk chlorine decay values were measured using the laboratory tests. Then, hydraulic and quality calibrations were carried out simultaneously using particle swarm optimization (PSO) as the optimization tool, Hazen-Williams roughness (CH−W) and fitting coefficients as the decision variables, and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) as the objective function. According to the results, the PSO algorithm was highly accurate in determining the CH−W and could minimize the difference between the observed and simulated values.