Pressure Sensor Placement In Water Networks Based On Sensitivity Matrix: A Real Instrumentation Project Plan

[EN] The instrumentation and supervision of water distribution networks (WDN) are challenging tasks as the use of monitoring devices imply a high cost including installation and maintenance. One of the emerging issues is the definition of the best possible layout of the measurements to be recorded. Considering the sampling costs and budget limitations on the number of sensors to be distributed, to determine a trade-off is mandatory. The trade-off may highly depend on the final use of these sensors. This work presents a methodology to support practitioners to decide which is the optimal pressure sensor placement and the appropriate number of pressure sensors to install on a WDN. Two main applications for demand calibration and leak detection and localisation are considered. A sensor placement methodology is applied to find the most sensible locations with respect to demand groups. Additionally, as the sensor placement methodology does not define an optimal number of sensors to be distributed in the WDN, an approach to formulate a trade-off is developed. This approach generates an indicator that quantifies the degree of relevance of the information recorded by a given sensor layout. The methodology presented is applied on a real WDN to select the most appropriate pressure measurement layout as part of an instrumentation project plan.