Valve identification with electrical conductivity measurements from digital water meters

<p dir="ltr">For many drinking water distribution systems (DWDSs), a small fraction of valves have a status (open/closed) that differs from the water utility’s network information system. This can delay valve section isolation and mitigation during calamities and may impair the model predictions that underly much network analysis. Dutch drinking water utilities anticipate the large-scale installation of digital water meters (DWMs). Although the principal reason is to streamline the billing cycle, other applications may add value for water utilities. It is thus timely to investigate the added value of specific DWM network configurations prior to roll-out. This study aims to quantify the benefits of adding electrical conductivity (EC) sensors to DWMs to detect incorrect valve status registrations. A synthetic network analysis was applied to a 22.5 km municipal DWDS containing 72 valves, operated by the PWN water utility. An inverse model approach was used to test the ability of an algorithm to locate a closed valve at a random location in a hydraulic simulation that considers uncertainty in water consumption and pipe diameters (the “observed” situation). The algorithm uses Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) as a quantitative measure of the similarity between the EC signals recorded for the “observed” situation and “candidate” scenarios in which a different valve is closed in each scenario. Our results show the effectiveness of the localization for different meter densities and present a preliminary method for selecting meter placements. Future steps to test the approach for a broader range of supply signals, stochastic demand patterns, and meter frequency are presented.</p><p dir="ltr">This paper was presented at the 21st Computing and Control in the Water Industry Conference (CCWI 2025) at the University of Sheffield (1st - 3rd September 2025).</p>