Urban Water Journal

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Improved modularity-based approach for partition

of Water Distribution Networks

Huaqi Yao, Tuqiao Zhang, Yu Shao, Tingchao Yu & Iran E. Lima Neto

To cite this article: Huaqi Yao, Tuqiao Zhang, Yu Shao, Tingchao Yu & Iran E. Lima Neto (2021)
Improved modularity-based approach for partition of Water Distribution Networks, Urban Water
Journal, 18:2, 69-78, DOI: 10.1080/1573062X.2020.1857801

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2020.1857801

Published online: 18 Dec 2020.

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URBAN WATER JOURNAL
2021, VOL. 18, NO. 2, 69–78
https://doi.org/10.1080/1573062X.2020.1857801

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Improved modularity-based approach for partition of Water Distribution Networks

a
Huaqi Yao , Tuqiao Zhanga, Yu Shaoa, Tingchao Yua and Iran E. Lima Netob
a
Department of Civil Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; bDepartment of Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering, Federal
University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The partition of complex Water Distribution Systems (WDSs) is required in order to simplify and facilitate Received 28 June 2020
the routine cumbersome management tasks. As a representative community detection algorithm, the Accepted 18 November 2020
Fast-Newman Algorithm (FNA) can efficiently partition the network into District Metered areas (DMAs) KEYWORDS
based on the modularity index. However, only the topological attribute is considered in the classic Network partition; modified
version. In this work, the modularity index and corresponding mergence mechanism of FNA are modified Fast-Newman algorithm;
first to improve water demand similarity among DMAs; then, an optimal selection of cut positions where heuristic methodology;
flow meters or gate valves will be installed is conducted to further improve water demand similarity demand similarity
among DMAs; finally, the inflow pipes of DMAs are optimally selected considering economy and the
impact on hydraulic performance of WDSs. The proposed approach is applied to three cases and the
results reveal the superiority of this method.

Introduction
As an indispensable municipal infrastructure, WDSs serve daily
water demand for life and social production. In the last decade,
the paradigm of ‘divide and conquer’ has been greatly pro­
moted worldwide to simplify the analysis and the management
tasks in WDSs (Di Nardo et al. 2013). Hence, the design of DMAs
has been carried out to facilitate pressure control (Laucelli et al.
2017a, 2017b), energy recovery (Lima, Junior, and Brentan
2017; Lima et al. 2018) and water quality protection (Di Nardo
et al. 2015). However, the search for suitable segmentations is
a crucial and challenging issue, as many requirements should
be met in network zoning planning, such as a reasonable num­
ber of DMAs, balanced properties and small number of inter­
connections (Ferrari, Savic, and Becciu 2014).
Generally, there are two main phases in the DMA-based
configuration retrofit of an existing network: (1) Clustering
phase. The number of DMAs and the nodes that belong to
each DMA are determined, allowing the identification of DMA
configuration; and (2) Dividing phase. The boundary pipes
between DMAs are generated after the first phase, then gate
valves and flow meters will be optimally placed to isolate the
DMAs and meter the flow rates. Several approaches are used to
design a DMA configuration in the Clustering phase and can
generally be divided into five categories: graph theory (Di
Nardo and Di Natale 2011; Tzatchkov, Alcocer-Yamanaka, and
Ortiz 2006), cluster algorithm (Di Nardo et al. 2017; Perelman
and Ostfeld 2012), multi-agent system (Herrera et al. 2012;
Izquierdo et al. 2011), multi-level recursive bisection (MLRB)
algorithms (Alvisi 2015; Di Nardo et al. 2013) and community
detection method (Ciaponi, Murari, and Todeschini 2016; Diao,
Zhou, and Rauch 2013). All of them have been successfully
applied to actual DMA zoning planning, and the community
detection method stands out due to its high speed and relia­
bility in decomposition of complex systems. Recently, Di Nardo
et al. (2020) has released an advanced software to design
automatically permanent partitioning of a water distribution
network, furthermore, a comprehensive review of various state-
of-the-art approaches in two phases is conducted by Khoa Bui,
Marlim, and Kang (2020)
In complex network theory, a community refers to a group of
nodes with stronger internal connections than external connec­
tions with other groups. Several methods have been proposed to
detect communities (Fortunato 2010). Among these, the modu­
larity-based approach is by far the most frequently used. The
modularity index is used as a measure to quantify the strength
of the graph partition into communities (Newman and Girvan
2003). An ideal partition scheme should present dense edges
within the communities and sparse connections between them.
As a typical modularity-based algorithm, the FNA (Clauset and
Newman 2004; Newman 2004) is an ambitious method designed
to maximize the modularity through a bottom-up merge process,
meeting the above-mentioned division requirements. However,
it is an arduous task to design DMAs with similar volumes of water
demand due to special features of WDSs and diverse demand
patterns. A set of studies has attempted to solve this issue in the
Battle of Water Networks District Metering Areas competition
held in Cartagena (Saldarriaga et al. 2019). Nevertheless, the
methods presented were either based on engineering experi­
ence or required intense preliminary analysis (Pesantez,
Berglund, and Mahinthakumar 2019), leading to a decrease in
efficiency and results reliability. Up to now, little research has
been focused on the suitability of FNA for optimization of WDSs.
Giustolisi and Ridolfi (2014) performed an in-depth analysis about
the modularity index as well as the optimization of WDS consid­
ering factors such as hydraulic characteristics and actual positions

CONTACT Yu Shao shaoyu1979@zju.edu.cn

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
70 H. YAO ET AL.
of hydraulic devices. However, the modified modularity index
was not used to guide the network partition procedure, but
only as one of the objective functions in the multi-objective
optimization process (MOGA) of network partition. Moreover,
the performance of MOGA was severely affected when the size
of the network was large.
In this work, an automatic two-step approach is developed
to improve the water demand similarity among DMAs in the
Clustering phase of DMA implementation. First, the modularity
index and corresponding mergence mechanism of FNA are
revised to preliminarily balance the water demand distribution
between DMAs in both single and extended period simulation
cases; then a revision and optimization process based on
Genetic Algorithm (GA) is implemented to correct and optimize
the demand distribution through the end nodes optimization
selection in each boundary pipe; finally, the inflow pipes of
DMAs are optimally selected among boundary pipes consider­
ing economy and the impact on hydraulic performance of
WDSs, and brief comparisons of hydraulic performance with
original WDSs (i.e. without partition) are presented.
Methodology
Modularity in the network theory
The modularity Q is an indicator to evaluate the quality of the
network or graph division into communities, which is proposed
as a comparison between the real network and a random net­
work (Clauset and Newman 2004; Newman 2004). In general,
a high value of modularity indicates a good partition and Q �
0:3 represents an excellent community structure in a partition
scheme. The definition of modularity is given by:
� �
1 X
Q¼ Avw
2np vw
where np represents the total number of links in the network,
and hence 2np is the total nodal degree, that is, the cumulative
sum of links connected to nodes; v and w are nodal indexes; Avw
is the element of the adjacency matrix, Avw = 1 if there is a link
connecting the nodes v and w; Avw = 0 otherwise; kv and kw are
the sum of links connected to nodes v and w respectively; cv
and cw are the communities in which the vertexes v and
w belong to; δ(cv, cw) = 1 if vertexes v and w are in the same
community, 0 otherwise.
To better understand the physical meaning of modularity, it
can also be formulated as:
P P
Avw δðcv ; cw Þ
Q ¼ vw
2np
1 XM
¼ n
np m¼1
|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl} |fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl}
Q1
where M is the number of communities; nm is the number of the
pipes with both end nodes belonging to the mth community;
ncm is the number of pipes with only one end node belonging
to the mth community, that is, the cut pipes separating the mth
community from others; then, (nm+ncm/2) represents the total
number of pipes contained in the mth community, and the cut
pipes should be counted 1/2 here.
The Q1 in Equation (2) can be further formulated as Equation
(3), where nc represents the total number of cut pipes.
1 XM nc
n ¼1
m ¼1 m
(3)
np np
Obviously, the number of cut pipes should be reduced as much
as possible in order to get a higher value of Q1, which fits in
exactly with the requirement of WDSs zoning planning,
because a lower number of cut pipes can effectively reduce
the investment cost of hydraulic devices and simplify the cor­
responding management. As for the Q2, when the number of
communities M is fixed, the value tends to be higher with
a more balanced property distribution between communities,
and a highest value Qmax
2 ¼ 1=M is obtained when all com­
munities own equal property. However, the balanced property
in original algorithm is the number of pipes, which has few
relations with the essential characteristics of WDSs. Hence,
a modification of the second term of modularity Q is necessary
considering the specificity of the hydraulic networks.
Modification of FNA for demand balance in single-period
simulation
As already mentioned, the original function of Q2 is to balance
the number of pipes among DMAs. However, there are non-
negligible differences in various pipes, such as length, diameter
or demand distribution along the pipeline. Therefore, it is
inappropriate to take the pipe number as a statistical indicator
to balance the property in DMAs such as water demand or pipe
length, and some revisions should be done to the modularity
kv kw index for special partition purposes.
δðcv ; cw ÞQ 2 ½ 0:5; 1Þ (1)
2np In this work, the modularity index and corresponding mer­
gence mechanism of FNA are modified to balance the demand
distribution among DMAs. Note that this methodology can also
be used for other purposes (e.g. balancing pipe length or back­
ground leakages). The modified modularity index is defined as
follows:
nc 1 XM �XNm �2
Q¼1 d m;i (4)
np D2 m¼1 i¼1
where D is the total base demand across the network; M is the
number of DMAs; Nm is the number of nodes in mth DMA; dm;i is
the base demand of ith node in mth DMA.
The corresponding change in Q upon joining two commu­
vw kv kw δðcv ; cw Þ nities is given by Equation (5), which alters and guides the
�2
2np overall merge process in the modified Fast-Newman algorithm.
1 XM � ncm �2 (2) �
m n m þ Aij =np di dj =D2 if i; j are connectded;
n2p m¼1 2 ΔQij ¼ (5)
0 otherwise
Q2
where Aij is the element of adjacency matrix A, representing
the number of pipes connecting the ith and jth DMAs, and Aij
= 1 in the initial merge process; np is the total number of pipes
in the network; di (dj) is the cumulative base demand con­
tained in ith (jth) DMA.
The entire improved procedure is illustrated below:

(1) Obtain the adjacency matrix A according to the network
topology of the whole WDS. Note that an additional
vector d is needed compared with the original algo­
rithm, the element di representing the water demand
contained in the ith node at first;
(2) At first, each node represents a DMA, and the initial
modularity Q0 is calculated with Equation (6);
(3) Evaluate the modularity change ΔQij for each pair of
DMAs i and j with Equation (5), assuming they are
combined;
(4) Find the pair of DMAs i* and j* with max (ΔQij) and
merge the corresponding elements in matrix A and vec­
tor d;
(5) Calculate the current modularity Qr with Equation (7)
and record it;
(6) Repeat the steps 3–5 until all the nodes are merged in
one DMA, selecting the optimal solution under the size
constraint (i.e. 500–5000 connections).
1 Xn n 2
Q0 ¼ d
i¼1 i
(6)
D2
Qr ¼ Qr 1 þ maxðΔQij Þr (7)
where nn is the number of nodes (i.e. the number of DMAs at
the beginning of the procedure); Where Qr-1 is the modularity in
the last round; maxðΔQij Þr is the maximum modularity incre­
ment in the current round.
Water demand balance in extended period simulation
Different from the static properties like pipe length or diameter in
the network, the nodal water demand may vary over time. For the
extended period simulation, if there is only one demand pattern
across the whole network, the partition scheme obtained from
the approach in single-period simulation (i.e. taking the base
demand as an indicator) is still reasonable because the water
demand of all nodes are increasing or decreasing in the same
proportion. However, when there are diverse demand patterns in
the different zones of the network, the base demand alone may
not be the best choice, resulting in an ineffective balance of water
demand in certain time periods. To address this issue, the paper
proposes a new mergence indicator to better balance the water
demands among DMAs in multiple periods as shown in Equation
(8), the physical meaning is to select the pair of communities that
have the highest comprehensive water demand balance benefit
after the mergence.
8 PNt d d
< it jt= 2
t¼1 Dt
ΔQij ¼ Aij =np N if i; j are connected (8)
: t
0 otherwise
where Nt is the number of time periods; dit (djt) represents the
cumulative actual demand contained in ith (jth) DMA in the tth
period; Dt is the total actual demand in the tth period.
In order to quantitatively evaluate the performance of the
modified FNA both in single and extended period simulation, it
is necessary to compare the partition schemes obtained by the
original FNA and modified FNA in terms of demand uniformity.
URBAN WATER JOURNAL 71
In this study, the coefficient of variation of demand (CVD) is
used to evaluate the schemes (Pesantez, Berglund, and
Mahinthakumar 2019), and a lower CVD value represents
a more balanced demand distribution scene.
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiP
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi�ffiffi
1 M �
M 1 m¼1 Qm Q
CVD ¼ � (9)
Q
where M is the number of DMAs; Qm is the total demand
� represents the average total
contained in the mth DMA; Q
demand across the DMAs.
A revision and optimization process of demand
distribution
In traditional procedure of FNA, the cut position is implicitly
assumed in the middle of the boundary pipes (Giustolisi and
Ridolfi 2014). Nevertheless, this assumption is misleading
because the hydraulic devices are usually installed close to
the end nodes of the pipes in actual condition, which leads to
a difference from the theoretical situation in the aspect of
property distribution (e.g. water demand or pipe length), and
hence the modularity value. In addition, the installation of
a device in one of the two end nodes corresponds to two
different partition schemes and also own different modularity
values as well as the property distribution.
To address the above issue, a revision and optimization
process is proposed in this work. The node attributes need to
be converted into pipe attributes using Equation (10), that is,
the nodal water consumptions are evenly distributed to the
adjacent pipes, and the partition scheme and corresponding
demand distribution are hence sensitive to the cut position.
(
ðqip þqjp Þlij
wijp ¼ 2 if i; j are connected (10)
0 otherwise
Qip
qip ¼ (11)
Li
where wijp is the water consumption along the pipe connecting
the nodes i and j in pth period; qip is the adjacent pipe demand
coefficient corresponding to node i in pth period; lij is the length
of pipe connecting nodes i and j; Qip is the demand of node i in
pth period; Li is the half of the total length of pipes connected to
node i.
Then, the optimization selection of end nodes for devices
installation is implemented to optimize the balance of water
consumption between DMAs. In this work, the Genetic
Algorithm (Goldberg and Holland 1988) is adopted with the
optimization of objective function Equation (12) (Pesantez,
Berglund, and Mahinthakumar 2019), and the binary coding is
used to encode the chromosome which is composed of
a sequence of genes. The number of genes is equal to the
number of boundary pipes and one gene corresponds to one
boundary pipe. If the value of ith gene is 0, the weight of
corresponding boundary pipe will be assigned to the DMA,
which its start node belongs to; on the other hand, if the
value of ith gene is 1, the weight of corresponding boundary
72 H. YAO ET AL.

pipe will be assigned to the DMA which its end node where X is the vector of decision variable with the length equals
belongs to. to the number of boundary pipes needed to be optimized; xi
P represents the status of the ith boundary pipe (xi = 0 if pipe
OF ¼ minð Pp¼1 CVDp Þ i keeps open and a flow meter will be installed; otherwise, xi
0 qffiffiffiffiffiffiP
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi1
PP M 1
1 M
ðQmp þQbmp Q� p Þ
2
(12) = 1), and the binary coding is employed in the strings of
¼ min@ p¼1 A
m¼1
Q� p
the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II)
(Kalyanmoy Deb et al. 2002).
Subject to:
The physical meaning of above objective function is to mini­
mize the water demand differences between DMAs as much as "i 2 Nn ; pi � preq (16)
possible. P is the number of periods; M is the number of DMAs;
Qmp represents the total inherent water demand in mth DMA in where Nn represents the set of demand nodes in WDSs; pi is the
pth period, which is equal to the sum of the weights of pipes nodal pressure in ith demand node; preq is the minimum service
that both ends belong to mth DMA in pth period; Qbmp repre­ nodal pressure in WDSs.
sents the water demand in boundary pipes assigned to mth
DMA in pth period; Q � p represents the average DMA water Case study
th
demand in p period. The proposed method was applied to three networks with
different layouts and sizes as shown in Figure 1, including
Modena (Huang et al. 2017), C town (Salomons 2009) and
Inflow pipes optimization H town (Zhang et al. 2016). The Modena network is a small-
After the above process, the inflow pipes of DMAs need to be scale system in Italy and works by gravity. C town network was
optimally selected among boundary pipes to complete the presented in the Battle of the Water Calibration Networks and is
entire partition process of WDSs. In this work, two objectives served by a pumping system. H town is a realistic medium-scale
are considered in this phase, that is, to minimize the total system in China and is also fed by gravity. The relevant informa­
implementation costs and the negative impact on hydraulic tion of each water system is summarized in Table 2.
performance of WDSs, which are shown in below: Both the single and extended period scenes are implemen­
�XV XF � ted to reveal the availability and efficiency of the Modified FNA.
OF1 ¼ min c v þ c f (13) In order to have a comparability between the schemes, the
v¼1 f ¼1
chosen number of DMAs in both schemes should be identical
PT ! and uniformly adopt the optimal one obtained by the original
t¼1 Ir algorithm, which is selected with highest modularity value
OF2 ¼ max (14)
T under the size constraint of 500–5000 connections (Ferrari,
Savic, and Becciu 2014; Morrison, Tooms, and Rogers 2007). In
where V is the number of gate valves in the scheme; cv is the this work, the selected optimal number of DMAs for three net­
cost of the vth gate valve; F is the number of flow meter in the works are 4, 7 and 15, respectively.
scheme; cf is the cost of the fth flow meter, the costs of gate
valves and flow meters with different diameters are shown in
Demand distribution in the single-period scene
Table 1; Ir is the resilience index (Todini 2000), which quantita­
tively characterizes the hydraulic reliability during pipe failures; The results of demand distribution among DMAs in three net­
T is the number of periods in hydraulic simulation. works are given in Figure 2 and Table 3 (the data is in descending
The decision variable of inflow pipes optimization model is order). It is clearly seen that the improved FNA can better balance
generalized as follows: the demand distribution compared with the original one. The
� coefficient of variation CVD declines from 0.464 to 0.297 for the
X ¼ x 1 ; x2 ; x3 ; . . . ; xp (15) Modena network, 0.369 − 0.153 for the C-Town and 0.535–0.228
for the H-Town, result in decreases by 36.0%, 58.5% and 57.4%,
respectively, representing a significant improvement with an aver­
Table 1. Costs of gate valves and flow meters. age value of 50.6%. Pesantez, Berglund, and Mahinthakumar
Diameter (mm) Gate valve (¥) Flow meter (¥) (2019) conducted the same analysis in the C-Town network
50 225.00 455.00 using a complex Multiphase Procedure method, which is based
100 400.00 744.00
150 675.00 1250.00
on graph theory, optimization, and heuristic methodologies, but
200 945.00 1810.00 the optimized minimum CVD value 0.31 is evidently higher than
250 1315.00 2520.00 the value of 0.15 obtained in the present work.
300 1770.00 3780.00
350 2180.00 4800.00
Moreover, the number of boundary pipes Nbp in each
400 2840.00 6300.00 scheme are also counted in Table 3. The results show that
500 4575.00 10200.00 there is no obvious increase in Nbp after the algorithm modifi­
600 5900.00 14300.00
700 8450.00 20500.00
cation. For the H-Town network, the Nbp even declined from 48
800 10850.00 23000.00 to 43, which is much beneficial for reducing the costs of initial
900 15650.00 34230.00 investment and later operation and maintenance. Again, for the
1000 22560.00 50350.00
C-Town network, the Nbp in Pesantez’s optimal scheme is three
 URBAN WATER JOURNAL 73

Figure 1. Three tested networks: (a) Modena; (b) C Town; and (c) H Town.

Table 2. Number of physical components of each water system.

patterns with 24 periods are adopted in this work, as shown in
Water network Nodes Pipes Reservoirs
Figure 3, and their layout in each network is shown in Figure 4.
Modena 268 317 4
C town 388 429 1
To validate the availability of the proposed indicator used in
H town 898 1012 1 the extended period simulation, we compared the resulting
partition scheme M3 with another two: the original scheme
M1, which considers only the network topology; and the
times higher than that obtained here with the same DMA method used for the single-period scene (i.e. taking the base
number. demand as an indicator), M2.
The results are shown in Figure 5 and Table 4. Figure 5
provides the CVD values in 24 periods, while Table 3 sum­
Demand distribution in the extended period scene
marizes the main characteristics of CVDs for each scheme,
As aforementioned in the methodology section, there is a non- including Max, Min, Sum and Mean value. For the Modena
negligible difference between single and extended period network, the scheme M3 is notably superior to the schemes
simulation in terms of demand balance, especially when there M1 and M2 in all four evaluation criterion. The maximum and
are diverse demand patterns in the network. In this section, we minimum CVD values in scheme M3 are clearly lower than those
test the availability of corresponding newly proposed mer­ in schemes M1 and M2, with the average CVD dropping by
gence indicator illustrated in Equation (8). In order to build an 46.3% and 32.8%, respectively, representing a considerable
extended period scene for the three networks, three demand improvement; For the C-Town network, the scheme M3 still
74 H. YAO ET AL.

Figure 2. Water demand distribution before and after the modification: (a) Modena; (b) C Town; and (c) H Town.

Table 3. Water demand distribution among DMAs. to the schemes M1 and M2. Besides, it can be seen from Figure 5
Scenarios Water Demand of DMAs (L/s) CVD Nbp (c) that the CVD values at different periods show a better uni­
Modena S1 155 128 63 61 0.464 18 formity in scheme M3. Overall, the proposed multi-period indi­
S2 140 107 93 67 0.297 17 cator shows the superiority in all the three networks, especially
Sr 132 107 99 70 0.246 17
C-Town S1 43 29 26 21 21 18 15 0.369 7
for systems such as Modena network, whose community fea­
S2 30 30 26 23 22 22 21 0.153 8 ture is not so obvious.
Sr 30 29 26 23 22 22 22 0.148 8
H-Town S1 262 165 143 141 134 119 98 93 88 86 0.535 48
65 60 58 49 42
S2 158 140 139 121 107 107 107 106 104 0.228 43 Demand distribution after the revision and optimization
100 95 88 85 75 71 process
Sr 156 134 134 119 107 107 107 107 104 0.207 43
98 97 96 84 80 71 The revision and optimization procedure is implemented sub­
# S1 is the scheme obtained by the original FNA; S2 is the scheme obtained by the sequently to both correct the scheme and balance the water
modified FNA; Sr is the final scheme obtained after the revision and optimiza­
tion of S2.
consumption between DMAs through the optimal selection of
end nodes, where flow meter or gate valve will be installed. The
procedure is implemented in MATLAB 2016a. The execution
results in the lowest maximum and minimum CVD values, time for all the cases was less than 5 seconds on average (50
similarly to the Modena network, and the average CVD is individuals, 200 generations) on a desktop computer config­
reduced by 29.6% compared to the scheme M1. Except for the ured with a 2.30-GHz Intel Core i5-6300HQ with 12.0 GB of RAM,
Modena network, the scheme M2 has a good performance in and the tests showed that the result had converged well when
this test and only a 4.4% increase in average CVD is observed, as running about 80 generations.
compared to the M3; Similarly, the scheme M3 shows the best For the single-period scene, the revised schemes Sr are
performance in the H-Town network, with the average CVD showed in Table 2, namely the scheme Sr. It is clear from the
reducing by 43.7% and 10.6%, respectively, when compared results that the procedure can further balance the demand

Figure 3. Three selected demand patterns: (a) Pattern 1; (b) Pattern 2; (c) Pattern 3.
distribution, with drops of 17.2%, 3.3% and 9.2% in CVDs when
compared with the schemes S2, and total drops of 47.0%, 59.9%
and 61.3% in CVDs are obtained in the scheme Sr when com­
pared to the original scheme S1 in three case networks; Table 3
shows the revised schemes Mr in the extended period scene.
The mean CVDs value of Modena network declines from 0.340
to 0.329 when compared with the scheme M3. Different from the
single-period simulation, the schemes Mr of C Town and H Town
are not obviously superior to the schemes M3 because there are
more complex situations in multiple periods scene, but they still
are the optimal ones in numerous revised schemes. Finally, in
three case networks, total drops of 49.1%, 29.5% and 44.0% in
CVDs are obtained respectively in scheme Mr when compared to
the original scheme M1, and the fluctuation in the number of
boundary pipes are negligible, proving the superiority of the
methodology.
Hydraulic performance comparisons after inflow pipes
optimization
Finally, the inflow pipes of DMAs need to be optimally selected
on the basis of the above revised partition schemes (i.e.
schemes Sr in single-period simulation and Mr in extended
simulation) to complete the entire partition process. In this
work, NSGA-II algorithm combined with the well-known
URBAN WATER JOURNAL 75
hydraulic simulator EPANET 2 (Rossman 2000) is adopted to
deal with the two-objective optimization problem (50 indivi­
duals, 200 generations, crossover probability Pc = 0.8, and
mutation probability Pm = 0.1), and the minimum required
service pressure of Modena, the C-Town and H-Town network
are respectively 20 m, 18 m and 24 m.
We choose the solution with lowest total implementation costs
in the Pareto front as the final implementation plan. Table 5 shows
some main information about the final partition schemes Sf in
single-period simulation and brief comparisons with original
WDSs S0 in the aspect of hydraulic performance, including the
total implementation costs, the number of flow meters Nfm, the
number of gate valves Ngv, minimum pressure Pmin, average pres­
sure Pmean, maximum pressure Pmax and resilience index Ir. The
results show that the indicator Pmax is basically constant in two
scenarios of three case networks meanwhile the Pmean are dropped
by 5.6%, 1.7% and 6.4% respectively, and the indicator Pmin in latter
scenario is approaching the minimum service pressure in each
network. Furthermore, the resilience index Ir after partition
dropped by 14.2%, 4.2% and 15.5% respectively in three case
networks, indicating some negative impacts on the hydraulic per­
formance of WDSs are existing, but is acceptable.
Table 6 shows the results in extended periods simulation, and
the values of each hydraulic indicator (i.e. Pmax, Pmean, Pmin and Ir)
are the average value of 24 periods. Similar to the situations in
76 H. YAO ET AL.
Figure 4. Layout of three demand patterns in each network: (a) Modena; (b) C Town; and (c) H Town.
single-period simulation, there is no significant change in indica­
tor Pmax meanwhile the Pmean has a slight decrease with drops of
3.1%, 0% and 6.4% respectively in three case networks, and Ir are
dropped by 6.9%, 0% and 12.5% respectively, and the impacts on
hydraulic performance are also acceptable. In addition, it must be
emphasized that the reason why hydraulic performance of
C-Town network remains unchanged before and after partition
is that all the six boundary pipes must be kept open to supply the
six DMAs without water source.
Conclusions
The approach proposed in this paper represents a progress to
the design of DMAs for WDSs. This approach couples the
modified FNA and an optimization process, creating an inte­
grated two-step procedure to design DMA configurations
with a minimum CVD value of water demand distribution,
reducing significantly the difference in the amount of water
delivered to each DMA. The inflow pipes of DMAs are
optimally selected among boundary pipes considering the
economy and impact on hydraulic performance of WDSs.
Three networks were used in this work to test the proposed
method. For the single-period scene, the CVD values declined
by about 47–61% after implementation of the proposed
approach, which represents a considerable improvement for
DMA design and planning. For the extended period scene, the
mean CVD value in 24 periods declined by an average of about
41% for the three networks, compared with the original
scheme. The results also showed that it is an acceptable way
to run single-period simulation by taking the base demand as
an indicator, instead of the extended period simulation for
DMAs designing, especially for more complex networks, since
the number of boundary pipes basically remained the same in
both the single and extended periods scenes. In addition, the
impacts on hydraulic performance of WDSs have proved to be
limited after closing some boundary pipes.
Finally, the overall procedure can be a template used for other
purposes in DMA design, such as balancing pipe length or
 URBAN WATER JOURNAL 77

Figure 5. CVD values of 24 periods in the three networks: (a) Modena; (b) C Town; and (c) H Town.

Table 4. Characteristics of CVDs in 24 periods. Table 6. Hydraulic performance comparisons in extended periods simulation.
Scenarios Max Min Sum Mean Nbp Scenarios Cost (¥) Nfm Ngv Pmin Pmean Pmax Ir
Modena M1 1.276 0.404 15.507 0.646 18 Modena M0 / / / 27.020 34.072 46.372 0.616
M2 0.725 0.238 12.441 0.518 17 Mf 18962 9 10 24.357 33.003 46.714 0.573
M3 0.669 0.181 8.157 0.340 19 C-Town M0 / / / 25.387 87.436 143.690 0.327
Mr 0.614 0.171 7.914 0.329 19 Mf 29760 6 0 25.387 87.436 143.690 0.327
C-Town M1 0.964 0.221 15.486 0.645 7 H-Town M0 / / / 33.593 40.386 45.632 0.878
M2 0.868 0.191 11.386 0.474 8 Mf 649940 20 28 29.524 37.787 45.627 0.768
M3 0.808 0.177 10.891 0.454 6
# M0 is the original WDSs without partition and Mf represents the final partition
Mr 0.806 0.175 10.925 0.455 6
scheme.
H-Town M1 1.336 0.442 16.976 0.707 48
M2 0.805 0.225 10.668 0.445 46
M3 0.592 0.280 9.552 0.398 46
Mr 0.578 0.273 9.512 0.396 46 background leakage among DMAs. Furthermore, more objectives
# Mr is the scheme obtained after the revision and optimization of M3. can be assimilated in the FNA modification process to explore
trade-offs among these objectives and obtain more reasonable
partition schemes, to improve the daily water infrastructure
Table 5. Hydraulic performance comparisons in single-period simulation.
management.
Scenarios Cost (¥) Nfm Ngv Pmin Pmean Pmax Ir
Modena S0 / / / 27.115 32.316 47.213 0.386
Sf 17768 8 9 20.582 30.491 47.214 0.331
C-Town S0 / / / 22.871 64.935 128.473 0.182 Acknowledgements
Sf 25715 6 2 22.881 63.849 128.118 0.174
H-Town S0 / / / 29.043 34.487 40.287 0.767 The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National
Sf 562695 20 23 24.712 32.274 40.265 0.648 Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51761145022) and the Brazilian
# S0 is the original WDSs without partition and Sf represents the final partition National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (No.
scheme. 441115/2016-0).
78 H. YAO ET AL.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and
Technological Development [No. 441115/2016-0]; the National Natural
Science Foundation of China [No. 51761145022].
ORCID
Huaqi Yao http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1939-6987
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