Design and Management of Water Distribution Systems
A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Water Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 October 2025 | Viewed by 1644
Special Issue Editors
Interests: reliability-based design optimization; artificial intelligence
Interests: hydropower; hydraulic transients; pumped-storage; water and energy nexus; hydrodynamic; renewables integration; water-energy efficiency
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Water distribution systems (WDSs) provide consumers access to safe and sufficient drinking water, making them a vital infrastructure component. This involves both the development of new systems and the upgrading and expansion of existing ones to address increasing water demands. Optimization is one of the most effective tools used, and it comes in the form of different approaches (e.g., gradient-based approaches, metaheuristic techniques, etc.) for designing and operating these important systems. Safe and optimal design and operation of WDSs is a challenging task that requires solving numerous simultaneous nonlinear equations while optimizing components' sizes, locations, and operational statuses. The complexity of this task increases when additional requirements, such as water quality and objectives beyond cost-effectiveness, like potential fire damage, are considered. Furthermore, real-life factors such as uncertainty and phased construction add to the intricacy of the optimization problem.
Within the context described above, this Special Issue presents the latest developments and approaches for the sustainable management of WDSs. The scope of the Special Issue is broad, as it includes different types of solutions for managing WDSs, the development of new algorithms for optimal design and operational statuses of components (e.g., pipes, pumps, tanks, and valves) for deterministic and probabilistic conditions, novel advanced network simulation procedures, and machine learning-based frameworks focused on the dynamic performance of WDSs, e.g., identifying contamination sources, predicting water pressure and demands at nodes, life-cycle assessment, sensitivity analysis, etc. Both theoretical developments and practical applications of WDSs are particularly welcomed.
Dr. Jafari-Asl Jafar
Prof. Dr. Helena M. Ramos
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- water distribution systems
- optimization
- machine learning
- transient flows
- uncertainty quantification
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