A Linearization Approach for Improving the Computational Efficiency of Water Distribution System Ranking-based Optimization Algorithms

This paper presents a linearization approach to be used within the framework of water distribution system optimization problems where the searching algorithm is guided by the ranking of the possible solutions characterized by a system performance indicator such as the resilience index. The results obtained in addressing two different problems applied to real water distribution systems, namely, identification of the optimal placement of flow meters in a district meter area and multi-objective design of a water distribution system, show that a linearized hydraulic simulator although not capable of correctly describing the hydraulic functioning of the network, nonetheless enables each solution it finds to be assigned a value of the performance indicator whose ranking closely approximates the ranking of the corresponding solution that would be obtained if the full hydraulic simulator was used. This ensures significant reductions in computational times.