Collaborative Heterogeneous Sensing: An Application to Contamination Detection in Water Distribution Networks

In this paper we consider sensor networks for detecting contamination in urban water distribution systems. We assume that the sensor nodes are installed at connection points only (through the manholes) and are driven by super-capacitors charged by water flow. Although water systems may be affected by a large variety of contaminants, only a few sensors can be practically deployed. Thus many types of contaminants are sensed via “proxy sensing”, which may not be 100% reliable. In this paper we consider such a situation and examine the problem of collaborative adaptation of heterogeneous set of sensors in order to maximize contamination detection, especially during periods of almost zero natural water flow. The paper shows, through extensive simulations, that the proposed approach can drastically reduce the contamination reporting time from 31/2 hours to ~6 minutes, compared to the case without adaptation.