In drinking water networks, hydraulics and water quality stand out as two paramount phenomena, each with its distinct focus and time-scale. Hydraulics is concerned with delivering adequate pressure throughout the network, ensuring that water flows efficiently to meet consumers' needs. On the other hand, water quality focuses on the maintenance of high standards for water safety within the network. These two critical aspects operate on distinct time-scales. Hydraulics undergo changes on a longer time-scale, reflecting the gradual shifts in flow rates and pressure levels across the network. In contrast, water quality dynamics require faster measures, often necessitating the computation of hydraulic profiles in advance. That is, a layer of complexity arises from the interdependency of the water quality dynamics on the system’s hydraulics. This interdependence significantly impacts the performance of the water quality control and regulation algorithm in response to hydraulic adjustments. Prior studies have tended to focus on the two problems separately; Some studies have focused on optimizing the operational hydraulic settings, while others have concentrated on regulating water quality dynamics. Moreover, other studies have coupled these two problems leading to trade-offs between conflicting objectives. In this study, we adopt a control-theoretic perspective to investigate the intricate relationship between optimized hydraulic operation and water quality control. Our proposed framework explores the enhancement of water quality controllability while solving the pump schedule optimization problem. We examine the resultant trade-offs of the operational scheduling problem in comparison to the decoupled approach—and evaluate the impact on the water quality control performance. We assess and validate the proposed approach on various case studies with different scales and hydraulic scenarios. This study offers novel approaches to the integration of hydraulic and water quality control, paving the way for more effective and resource-efficient management of water distribution networks.
