Optimal Sensor Placement for Leakage Detection and Isolation in Water Distribution Networks

In this paper, the problem of leakage detection and isolation in water distribution networks is addressed applying an optimal sensor placement methodology. The chosen technique is based on structural models and thus it is suitable to handle non-linear and large scale systems. A drawback of this technique arises when costs are assigned uniformly. A main contribution of this paper is the proposal of an iterative methodology that focuses on identifying essential sensors which ultimately leads to an improvement of the optimal search efficiency. The algorithm presented in this work is successfully applied to a District Metered Area (DMA) in the Barcelona water distribution network.