Water Distribution Network Skeletonization Using the Resilience Concept

This paper presents a methodology that uses the concept of resilience to generate skeletonized or reduced models of Water Distribution Networks (WDN) with a significantly smaller number of pipes in comparison with the prototype, but that still can simulate, in a very precise manner, the hydraulic and water quality characteristics of the real network. In order to do this, the effect of each pipe on the Resilience Index of the entire WDN is evaluated under hydraulic design conditions. Next, the network is skeletonized by removing from it those pipes with the minimum impact on the Resilience Index, assuring that all consumption nodes are still connected. In order to guarantee that non permanent water quality parameters (i. e. residual chlorine in consumption nodes) of the prototype are adequately reproduced by the reduced model, a correction formula for the bulk and wall coefficient, that control chlorine decay in WDN, was developed; depending on the distance of each pipe to the reservoir or supply source, the correction factor applied to its bulk and wall coefficients is different. The proposed methodology was applied to three WDN and the results obtained are satisfactory: the skeletonized models are able to reproduce the hydraulic behavior and residual chlorine of the entire WDN with high accuracy.