Data Validation and Reconstruction for Performance Enhancement and Maintenance of Water Networks

In a real water network, a telecontrol system must periodically acquire, store and validate data gathered by sensor measurements in order to achieve accurate monitoring of the whole network in real time. For each sensor measurement, data are usually represented by one-dimensional time series. These values, known as raw data, need to be validated before further use to assure the reliability of the results obtained when using them. In real operation, problems affecting the communication system, lack of reliability of sensors, or other inherent errors often arise, generating missing or false data during certain periods of time. These wrong data must be detected and replaced by estimated data. Thus, it is important to provide the data system with procedures that can detect such problems and assist the user in monitoring and processing the incoming data. Data validation is an essential step to improve data reliability. The validated data represent measurements of the variables in the required form where unnecessary information from raw data has been removed. In this paper, a methodology for data validation and reconstruction of sensor data in a water network is used to analyze the performance of the sectors of a water network. Finally, from this analysis several indicators of the components (sensors, actuators and pipes) and of the sectors themselves can be derived in order to organize useful plans for performance enhancement and maintenance. Nice practices have been developed during a large period in the water network of the company ATLL Concessionària de la Generalitat de Catalunya, S.A.