Dynamic Water Quality Sensor Placement Using Metaheuristic Algorithm on Water Distribution System: 17th International Computing & Control for the Water Industry Conference

The optimal placement of the water quality sensor for determining sources of contamination or pressure changes due to a leak in the pipeline has recently become a major problem because of the cost associated with the type and number of sensors [1]. The problem becomes even more serious when it comes to large networks in which the deployment, implementation, and maintenance of sensors require significant financial investments [2]. Over the past two decades, significant efforts have been made to the placement of sensors that monitor the quality of water in Water Distribution System (WDS) [3]. Optimization of sensor placement in WDS is classified in the category of NP-hard problems with an exponential computational complexity. To solve the sensor placement problem, many different solvers have been used to optimize sensor location, including Integer Programming (IP) solutions, genetic algorithms, and local search. Other well-known optimization algorithms have also used metaheuristic optimization methods [4]. This paper aims to propose a dynamic placement method for the water quality sensor which adapt the sensor locations based on the hydraulic and water quality data using metaheuristic algorithm. The proposed model considers to reduce the impact of the contamination event along with low number of sensors to maintain cost-effective design.