Efficient Partitioning of Water Distribution Networks Using a Graph-Theoretical Approach

We present an efficient graph-theoretical method for partitioning water distribution networks (WDNs) into district metered areas (DMAs). The proposed algorithm consists of two main parts, namely WDN partitioning and DMA connection, and is tested on a real-life WDN, for which different weight cases are compared. The efficiency of the proposed DMA connection algorithm, in regard to the traditional combinatorics approach, is shown for various numbers of established DMAs. The final solution is selected according to the multi-criteria evaluation model, which was developed in order to reduce the subjective influence in the selection process and considers hydraulic, cost, and topological criteria. The results show that the newly proposed spectral partitioning method, namely generalized normalized cut, is appropriate for WDN partitioning and that we can further improve the quality of the obtained solutions by considering appropriate topological and cost-based WDN information in the partitioning process.