Contamination Source Identification in Water Distribution Networks Based on Negative Gradient Method

Abstract:

This paper discusses the problem of pollution source identification in water distribution systems. First, a mathematical optimization model on the identification problem is built. Then with the EPANET Toolkit as the embedded water quality simulator, the optimization problem is solved with a negative gradient method. The methodology is finally applied to a sample network model published within the EPANET software, and the result shows that it is able to identify the time, location and concentration of the contamination injection sources effectively. To evaluate the performance of the algorithm, impacts of factors such as difference step and gradient method were further discussed, and the results show that, with water quality tolerances as the differential step, the water quality simulation based finite difference method is an effective algorithm to solve the pollution source identification problem in water distribution system.

Key words:water distribution networks; contamination source identification; gradient method; optimization