A Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm Approach to the Design of Reliable Water Distribution Networks

The paper presents a multi-objective genetic algorithm approach to the design of a water distribution network. The objectives considered are minimization of network cost and maximization of a reliability measure. In this study, a new reliability measure, called network resilience, is introduced. This measure mimics a designer's desire of providing excess power at nodes and designing reliable loops with practicable pipe diameters. The proposed method produces a set of Pareto-optimal solutions in the search space of cost and network resilience. Genetic algorithms are observed to be poor in handling constraints. To handle constraints in a better way, a constraint handling technique that does not require a penalty coefficient and applicable to water distribution systems is presented. The present model is applied to two example problems, which were widely reported. Pipe failure analysis carried out on some of the solutions obtained revealed that the network resilience based approach gave better results in terms of network reliability.