Innovative and sustainable methodologies for smart water network management

‘Smart, innovative, and sustainable’. These are the crucial – we would say inescapable – requirements of any new method and procedure for managing natural, social, and economic resources currently being debated and then accepted as possible best practice. Further, when dealing with drinking water and pipe systems, leakage reduction and control are mandatory in any management plan also because of the need to save energy and water. The opportunities for researchers and water utility technicians at international conferences to contribute new methods and devices as tools for improving the performance of pipe systems are very welcome. Furthermore, the number of journals in which innovative approaches and techniques can be presented and the number of exhibitions showing technologies for treatment and drinking water distribution are currently increasing throughout the world. It is against this background that the Water Loss Specialist Group (WLSG) of the International Water Association (IWA) has been operating, with the important aim of standardising water utility performance indicators and reaching international consensus on a standard water balance. The IWA conference ‘Water IDEAS’ (Intelligent Distribution for Efficient and Affordable Supplies) 2014, was held in Bologna (22–24 October) under this umbrella. The meeting was cochaired by Marco Fantozzi (StudioMarcoFantozzi, Italy) and Tim Waldron (chair of WLSG of IWA, Australia). It attracted more than one hundred presentations, along with a special session on Smart Water Projects funded by the European Commission and other Institutions, allowing project partners to present their innovative solutions, disseminate their results, exchange experiences and liaise with other researchers and innovators. The interest for Water IDEAS 2014 was also due to the fact that it was hosted by ACCADUEO 2014, the most important water fair in Italy. As for some international conferences, a number of papers were selected by the Scientific Committee for a possible publication in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal. The papers included in this special issue are those which have been considered suitable following peer review for publication in Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems. The paper ‘Comparison of parametric and nonparametric disaggregation models for the top-down generation of water demand time series’ by Alvisi, Ansaloni, and Franchini (2016) concerns the characterization of the water demand following a ‘top-down’ approach (i.e. the water demand pattern is defined for the entire network or for macro areas and then disaggregated among the nodes of the system model according to the number of users connected to each of them). By considering the hourly water demand data of the town of Milford, Ohio, Alvisi, Ansaloni, and Franchini (2016) show that the disaggregation models allow the proper simulation of the behaviour of the experimental series with their performance depending on the considered statistics. The paper ‘Optimisation of leakage and energy in the Abbiategrasso district’ by Creaco et al. (2016) discusses a methodology for reducing energy consumption and leakage in the Abbiategrasso district of Milan. Such a methodology is based on the use of minimization algorithms and allows significant savings in terms of leakage and pump operational costs. At the same time, the minimum desired value of the pressure is guaranteed at all network nodes.