Robust optimization methodologies for water supply systems design

Water supply systems (WSSs) are vital infrastructures for the well-being of people today. To achieve good customer satisfaction the water supply service must always be able to meet people's needs, in terms of both quantity and quality. But unpredictable extreme conditions can cause severe damage to WSSs and lead to poorer levels of service or even to their failure. Operators dealing with a system's day-to-day operation know that events like burst water mains can compromise the functioning of all or part of a system. To increase a system's reliability, therefore, designs should take into account operating conditions other than normal ones. Recent approaches based on robust optimization can be used to solve optimization problems which involve uncertainty and can find designs which are able to cope with a range of operating conditions. This paper presents a robust optimization model for the optimal design of water supply systems operating under different circumstances. The model presented here uses a hydraulic simulator linked to an optimizer based on a simulated annealing heuristic. The results show that robustness can be included in several ways for varying levels reliability and that it leads to more reliable designs for only small cost increases.