Sensor Cooperation Gain System for Burst Monitoring in Water Distribution Network: Concept, Design, and Evaluation

Abstract

Pipe bursts in water distribution networks (WDNs) not only cause significant water wastage but also pose risks of secondary disasters, such as road collapses. In most cases, these failures often result in a simultaneous decrease in values across multiple pressure sensors, indicating strong correlations in pressure data from the same event. This correlation suggests that leveraging the cooperative interaction between multiple sensors can significantly enhance burst detection sensitivity and expand coverage—an advantage largely overlooked in current methods. To address this gap, this study introduces a sensor cooperation gain system that constructs virtual sensors based on pressure data correlations and applies value fusion principles to form a multi-sensor, cooperation-based burst detection model, thus enabling more accurate system-wide decision-making. Case studies demonstrate that, compared to the existing method, the proposed gain fusion approach improves monitoring coverage by 25.34% and reduces the minimum coverage burst flow rate by 29.69 m³/hr.