Approcci innovativi per l'analisi di reti acquedottistiche

In the water distribution systems research, the emergence of new technologies and methods has led to the development of new approaches for both typical problems (e. g. pipe network design, model calibration) and new challenges (e. g. network segmentation, pumping optimization). The research activity here described has had as primary objective the construction and calibration of the numerical model of a real urban water distribution system (50’000 inhabitants). It has been possible to suggest two operations in order to improve the management and to reduce losses and energy costs. The second part of the activity has focused on the districtualization problem, i. e., the identification of subnetworks for a better control of water losses in the distribution network. A new method has been proposed that is fully automatic and fast also for real water distribution network. Finally, it is presented an application of genetic algorithms to the real network modeled previously. The optimization is used to identify the positions and the settings of the pressure reducing valves to be installed in the distribution network.