Battle of the Water Networks District Metered Areas

Abstract

The Battle of Water Networks District Metered Areas (BWNDMA) was the latest of the Battle of Water Networks competition series held at the 18th Water Distribution Systems Analysis Conference (WDSA 2016) as part of ASCE’s Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) stand-alone conferences in Cartagena, Colombia in July 2016. In these competitions, the main objective was to address a specific problem related to water distribution systems (WDS) regarding how to optimize the design and operation of the system’s main components. This time, the competition was focused on the challenge of WDS network sectorization, that is, determination of the new district metered areas (DMAs) for an existing network. Design requirements involved constraints related to costs, pressure uniformity, and water quality. Changes in valve and pump operations were needed to supply demands at adequate pressures and acceptable water quality for the given supply scenarios: a wet season and a dry season with water shortages. Seven teams from different parts of the world participated in the BWNDMA and presented their solutions at a special session during the 18th WDSA. This article summarizes the BWNDMA teams’ approaches, outcomes, and learned lessons for solving the challenging stated problem. An analysis of some of the decisions that were taken is presented; for instance, some teams ignored the demand similarity criterion, the water age criterion, the pressure restrictions, or the constraints in the water rate that could be extracted from sources. The approaches developed in the BWNDMA represent the state-of-the-art with respect to the analysis of hydraulic conditions in DMAs of real-world water distribution networks for which it is mandatory to make efficient use of available water resources.