Plug-and-play Commissionable Models for Water Networks with Multiple Inlets

Water scarcity is an increasing problem world-wide, yet at the same time huge amounts of water are lost through leakages in the distribution network. Fortunately, improved pressure control can lower the leakage problems. In this work, water networks with multiple pressure actuators and several consumers are considered. We show that a simple model mapping from the actuator pressures and flows to measured pressures inside the network can be derived, when the actuation is restricted to a well-defined subspace. This is shown under mild assumptions on the consumption pattern and hydraulic resistances of pipes. Numerical results of a real-life case-study comparing the output of an EPANETl model with the output of the proposed reduced network model support the theoretical results.