Ant Colony Optimization for Least-Cost Design and Operation of Pumping Water Distribution Systems

Developed and demonstrated in this paper is an ant colony methodology extending previous work on ant colony optimization for least-cost design of gravitational water distribution systems with a single loading case, to the conjunctive least-cost design and operation of multiple loading pumping water distribution systems. Ant colony optimization is a relatively new meta-heuristic stochastic combinatorial computational discipline inspired by the behavior of ant colonies: ants deposit a certain amount of pheromone while moving, with each ant probabilistically following a direction rich in pheromone. This behavior has been used to explain how ants can find the shortest path between their nest and a food source, and inspired the development of ant colony optimization. The optimization problem solved herein is through linking an ant colony scheme with EPANET for the minimization of the systems design and operation costs, while delivering the consumers required water quantities at acceptable pressures. The decision variables for the design are the pipe diameters, the pumping stations maximum power, and the tanks storage, while for the operation — the pumping stations pressure heads and the water levels at the tanks for each of the loadings. The constraints are domain pressures at the consumer nodes, maximum allowable amounts of water withdrawals from the sources, and tanks storage closure. The proposed scheme is explored through base runs and sensitivity analysis using two pumping water distribution systems examples.

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