Optimal placement of imperfect water quality sensors in water distribution networks

Abstract

Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) are often susceptible to either accidental or deliberate contamination which can lead to poisoned water, many fatalities and large economic consequences. In order to protect against these intrusions or attacks, an efficient sensor network with a limited number of sensors should be placed in a WDN. In this paper, we focus on optimal sensor placements by introducing two greedy-based algorithms in which the imperfection of sensors and multiple objectives can be taken into account. The algorithms were tested using a medium scale urban WDN. It is shown that our algorithms are able to find sensor placements in reasonable time and that its solutions are close to optimal. Furthermore, relaxing the often used assumption that sensors work perfectly results in different sensor placements than were found before, indicating the importance to take sensor imperfection into account when placing sensors.