Agent-based Division of Water Distribution Systems into District Metered Areas

Water distribution systems are extremely complex assets. The complexity of these systems is continually increasing from the point of view of technical management. Most water companies do not have the necessary global vision of their production and distribution, and lack suitable tools to control and operate their systems. As a result, an increasing number of projects examining suitable methods to divide water distribution networks into district-metered areas (DMA) are in progress in many cities worldwide. Division into DMAs aims at splitting large interconnected distribution network into smaller and virtually independent networks. Division into DMAs enables action to be taken to improve the control of important aspects of water distribution, such as leaks and water quality. Due to the complexity of the problem, especially for large systems, efficient techniques are required. In this paper, we introduce a multi-agent approach that takes advantage of the distributed nature of water distribution systems. This approach has been applied to a real network with promising results.