The Battle of the Water Networks II (BWN-II) is the latest of a series of competitions related to the design and operation of water distribution systems (WDSs) undertaken within the Water Distribution Systems Analysis (WDSA) Symposium series. The BWN-II problem specification involved a broadly defined design and operation problem for an existing network that has to be upgraded for increased future demands, and the addition of a new development area. The design decisions involved addition of new and parallel pipes, storage, operational controls for pumps and valves, and sizing of backup power supply. Design criteria involved hydraulic, water quality, reliability, and environmental performance measures. Fourteen teams participated in the Battle and presented their results at the 14th Water Distribution Systems Analysis (WDSA 2012) conference in Adelaide, Australia, September 2012. This paper summarizes the approaches used by the participants and the results they obtained. Given the complexity of the BWN-II problem and the innovative methods required to deal with the multi-objective, high dimensional and computationally demanding nature of the problem, this paper represents a snap-shot of state of the art methods for the design and operation of water distribution systems. A general finding of this paper is that there is benefit in using a combination of heuristic engineering experience and sophisticated optimization algorithms when tackling complex real-world water distribution system design problems.Angela Marchi...Angus R. Simpson, Aaron C. Zecchin, Holger R. Maier...Christopher Stokes, Wenyan Wu, Graeme C. Dandy...et al

Water systems planning and management share the same roots with gaming, as they rely on concepts in systems analysis, operations research and decision sciences. This paper focuses on Serious Games (those used for purposes other than mere entertainment), with applications in the area of water systems planning and management. A survey of published work on gaming is carried out with particular attention given to applications of Serious Gaming to water systems planning and management. The survey is also used to identify the principal criteria for the classification of Serious Gaming for water related applications, including application areas, goals, number and type of players, user interface, type of simulation model used, realism of the game, performance feedback, progress monitoring and game portability. The review shows that game applications in the water sector can be a valuable tool for making various stakeholders aware of the socio-techno-economic issues related to managing complex water systems. However, the critical review also indicates a gap that exists in the Serious Game application area with the lack of water distribution system games. A conceptually simple, but computationally elaborate new game for water distribution system analysis, design and evaluation (SeGWADE) is presented in this paper. It has a main goal of finding a least-cost design for a well-known benchmark problem, for which the game environment takes the computational and visualisation burden away from the simulation tool and the player. The game has been evaluated in a classroom environment in which a high degree of player engagement with the game was observed, due to its basic game ingredients and activities, i.e., challenge, play and fun. In addition, a clear improvement in learning has been observed in how players attempted to identify solutions that satisfy the pressure criterion with players readily identifying the proximity of the better solutions to the starting, infeasible configuration. Through applications of Serious Gaming such as this, decision makers can learn about the complexity of the water distribution system design problem, experiment safely using a computer model of a real system, understand conflicting objectives (i.e., minimization of cost and satisfaction of minimum pressure) and develop strategies for coping with complexity without being burdened by the limitations of the ICT technology at their disposal.

This study presents a methodology based on Linear Programming for determining the optimal pump schedule on a 24-hour basis, considering as decision variables the continuous pump flow rates which are subsequently transformed into a discrete schedule. The methodology was applied on a case study derived from the benchmark Anytown network. To evaluate the LP reliability, a comparison was made with solutions generated by a Hybrid Discrete Dynamically Dimensioned Search (HD-DDS) algorithm. The cost associated with the result derived from the LP initial solution was shown to be lower than that obtained with repeated HD-DDS runs with differing random seeds

In water networks characterized by a significant variation in ground elevations the necessity of pumping water in some areas is complicated by a conflicting requirement to reduce excess pressures in other areas. This and the increasing cost of electricity has led to the use of Pumps-operating-As-Turbines (PATs) devices that can reduce pressure (and leakage) whilst harvesting energy. This paper presents a methodology for optimal water distribution system (WDS) management, driving the optimization by minimizing the surplus pressure at network nodes and the operational pumping costs and maximizing the income generated through energy recovery. The method is based on a highly parallelized Evolutionary Algorithm, employing an hydraulic solver to evaluate hydraulic constraints. Water demands at network nodes are considered as uncertain variables modelled by using a probabilistic approach in order to take into account unknown future demands. The approach is demonstrated in different case studies. Results obtained highlight that the economic benefits of installing PATs for energy recovery in conjunction with a combined pump-scheduling and pressure management regime is especially related to the input network characteristics. Further analysis of the importance of the probabilistic approach and of the influence of the interval time step adopted for the optimization has been evaluated.