Spatiotemporal chlorine residual prediction in water distribution networks using a hierarchical water quality simulation technique

Recently, water supply management technology is highly developed, and a computer simulation model plays a critical role for estimating hydraulics and water quality in water distribution networks (WDNs). However, a simulation of complex large water networks is computationally intensive, especially for the water quality simulations, which require a short simulation time step and a long simulation time period. Thus, it is often prohibitive to analyze the water quality in real-scale water networks. In this study, in order to improve the computational efficiency of water quality simulations in complex water networks, a hierarchical water-quality-simulation technique was proposed. The water network is hierarchically divided into two sub-networks for improvement of computing efficiency while preserving water quality simulation accuracy. The proposed approach was applied to a large-scale real-life water network that is currently operating in South Korea, and demonstrated a spatiotemporal distribution of chlorine concentration under diverse chlorine injection scenarios.