Energy saving and leakage control in Water Distribution Networks: a joint research project between Italy and China

One of the most challenging problems in the Chinese water sector is to fulfill water requests in urban areas with increasing population density and deteriorate water distribution infrastructures. Effective decision support systems (DSS) are required to manage energy consumption for pumping by simultaneously controlling leakage volumes. A recently approved joint project between Italy and China aims at transferring the latest advancements on water distribution network (WDN) analysis and management to Chinese water engineers to develop effective DSS by using the WDNetXL system (www.hydroinformatics.it). The preliminary DMAs design on a pilot WDN is reported to exemplify the WDNetXL decision support paradigm.