197 - Reducing Information Overlap in Sampling Locations during a Contamination Event in Real-Size Networks

In Water Distribution Systems (WDS), fixed sensors have been widely used to detect contamination events and identify their source location in a timely manner. However, due to limitations such as budget and specificity in the contaminant that can be detected, these sensors are not sufficient to fully characterize a potential contamination event. In this context, previous research developed by our group has demonstrated the feasibility of including Confirmatory Sampling Locations (CSL) as an alternative to gather new information whether a junction in the network is contaminated – or not – in real-time, thereby improving the performance of a contaminant spread algorithm.
In previous research, a clustering approach was proposed to reduce the solution space of real-size networks utilizing each cluster as a potential sampling unit rather than the individual junctions. This method made the placement of CSL in a large network (12000+ junctions) possible in a real-time scheme while achieving near-optimal solutions. Once the solution space has been reduced by clustering based on similar water quality dynamics, our current research is analyzing the correlation between the sampling units using metrics derived from Information Theory within a large network. This current analysis will update our sensor placement approach in order to reduce the overlap of collected information between the different locations in the water distribution network.