Milano water supply network is located in the city of Milano (Italy).

The network is a complex system that provides water to around 1.3 million inhabitants. The total water supply comes from groundwater which is abstracted by pumping wells. Finally, the water is pumped into the distribution network from the storage tanks. The whole network consists two connected systems, Water Transmission Network (WTN) and Water Distribution Network (WDN). There are 642 pumping wells in WTN and 27 pumping stations with total 101 booster pumps in WDN. The total length of WDN is around 2300 km.

Problem

The company Metropolitana Milanse (MM) is in charge of the operation of the network. The company formulates the following problem: the operational expenses exceed the cost of water resource demand. This means the pump schedule is not well optimized to fit the water demand pattern in Milano network. Thus, an advanced optimisation approaches as well as simulation based approaches shall be used to enable dynamic operation.

Objectives

The general objective is to define and prototype a web-based decision support framework for model-based optimisation and test it on water supply network.

The specific objectives are:

1. Propose the design solutions for decision support framework (DSF).
2. Select, test and possibly improve the multi-objective optimisation algorithms suitable for model-based optimisation with computationally complex models.
3. Integrate modeling and optimisation codes with appropriate interfaces and the web platform and test the resulting DSF.

Methodology

Achievement

Publication

“Application of a web-based decision support system for water supply networks”, Environmental Engineering and Management Journal, September 2015

EPANET Hydraulic simulation

PHP extension modules.

Postgresql and PostGIS database desing and implementation

Web-based Decision Support System

• LAMP
• GeoServer
• PostgreSQL
• PostGIS
• OpenLayers