Use of Flow Meters for Managing Water Supply Networks

Bojana Janković-Nišić1; Čedo Maksimović, M.ASCE2; David Butler3; and Nigel J. D. Graham4

Abstract: A study of water consumption data collection and processing in the context of on-line monitoring and burst detection in water
distribution networks is presented using a methodology for positioning of flow meters and selection of a monitoring time step. A stochastic
model analyzes the propagation of initial uncertainty in water consumption through a water supply network and its influence on calculated
flows. The model combines EPANET and a Monte Carlo based random sampling procedure that simulates the usage of domestic
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appliances. The model is validated on a medium-sized water distribution network, located in the southeast region of England. Statistical
analysis of the calculated flows suggests that flow meters should be located at pipes with the highest variance in flow in order to make
sudden changes in monitored flow detectable. As a result, an appropriate size of a district metering area 共DMA兲 can be proposed. For the
case study network studied here, a compromise DMA size of 250 properties is suggested.
DOI: 10.1061/共ASCE兲0733-9496共2004兲130:2共171兲
CE Database subject headings: Flow measurement; Water supply; Water distribution; Hydraulic networks; Water meters.

Introduction
The aim of this study is to provide a more systematic approach in
designing target oriented data acquisition systems for the control
of water distribution networks. A target oriented monitoring sys-
tem includes the sampling design problem, which is that of de-
fining the location and the sampling time interval of the measure-
ments to be taken.
When collecting flow data for the monitoring of water distri-
bution networks, it is usual to distinguish between two types,
depending on the ‘‘level’’ of collection, as defined by the size of
the monitoring area. Thus flow data can be collected at the prop-
erty level and the district metering area 共DMA兲 level. DMAs are
control areas presently used for monitoring and leakage detection
of water distribution systems in the U.K. Their size is arbitrary,
but a typical size is 500–3,000 connections 共WRc 1994兲, as
shown in Fig. 1. For the purpose of monitoring and detection of
leakage, instrumentation must be installed at strategic points. Ad-
ditionally, data can be collected in the form of snapshots or cu-
mulative values over a certain period. It is therefore important to
1
BSc, PhD, Network Modelling Engineer, Halcrow Water
Services, Snodland, Kent ME6 5AH, UK. E-mail: jankovic-
nisicb@halcowws.com
2 tion systems 共Obradovic and Lonsdale 1998; Orr et al. 1999兲. The
Visiting Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ,
UK. E-mail: c.maksimovic@imperial.ac.uk
3
Professor of Water Engineering, Dept. of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Lon-
don SW7 2AZ, UK. E-mail: d.butler@imperial.ac.uk
4
Professor of Environmental Engineering, Dept. of Civil and Environ-
mental Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Cam-
pus, London SW7 2AZ, UK. E-mail: n.graham@imperial.ac.uk
Note. Discussion open until August 1, 2004. Separate discussions
must be submitted for individual papers. To extend the closing date by
one month, a written request must be filed with the ASCE Managing
Editor. The manuscript for this paper was submitted for review and pos-
sible publication on June 28, 2001; approved on April 25, 2003. This
paper is part of the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Manage-
ment, Vol. 130, No. 2, March 1, 2004. ©ASCE, ISSN 0733-9496/2004/2-
171–179/$18.00.
examine what is the appropriate DMA size and time period to be
used for monitoring pipe flows.
Nowadays, water distribution network models are considered a
strong analytical tool for the representation and analysis of water
supply systems. A water distribution network is usually repre-
sented with a set of nodes linked with so-called link elements
共pipes, valves, and pumps兲. The nodes represent physical junc-
tions of pipes or points of any change that can occur on the linear
elements. Reservoirs and tanks are also modeled as nodes. The
operation of the system is described by the set of curves defining
water consumption and pump characteristics. Pump functions are
controlled either by a tank level, by pressure set in a specified part
of the network, or by a time control. The interaction between the
physical characteristics of the elements of the network and the
state variables describing their behavior is defined by a set of
equations satisfying the mass and the momentum conservation
laws. In general, the system of equations is nonlinear and, regard-
less of which numerical method is deployed, the solution is found
through an iterative process. Many authors have described and
compared various methods proposed for efficient solution of hy-
draulic network models 共e.g., Salgado et al. 1987; Martinez and
Izquierdo 1994; Ivetic 1996兲.
More recently, a number of investigations have considered the
use of hydraulic models for on-line monitoring of water distribu-
need to take into account the uncertainties involved in hydraulic
modeling has been a logical consequence after numerical models
have been confirmed as being able to reliably represent real sys-
tems. One of the major sources of uncertainty is related to the
flow metering policy for effective leakage estimation and reduc-
tion. It has been widely discussed in the literature that instruments
for real-time monitoring should be located at the most sensitive
places in the network. Determining the sensitivity matrix is one of
the methods for examining the sensitive parameters that are used
in network calibration and in uncertainty analysis. The elements
of the sensitivity matrix define the change of a state variable due
to a change of only one parameter at a time 共Xu and Goulter
1998兲. Three methods to rank locations for optimal sampling de-
sign of water distribution networks were proposed by Bush and
Uber 共1998兲. They discussed which types of measurements are

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Fig. 1. District metering area 共DMA兲 and configuration 共WRc 1994兲
more sensitive to the changes in the parameters used for calibra-
tion, but not the sampling times. Skipworth et al. 共1999兲 also
observed that sensitivity is the key issue when network models
are being considered for use in operational management. This
study pointed out that flow measurements are typically much
more sensitive 共by an order of magnitude兲 to the hydraulic
changes than the pressure measurements. However, it was also
argued that the cost of flow measurements could be much higher
than for pressure measurements and thus the sensitivity analysis
was only performed with regard to pressure measurements.
For the examination of uncertainties and their propagation, a
sampling range must be defined for each parameter. When sam-
pling from this range, different probability distributions have been
utilized to describe the variability of each parameter within the
sampling range. In general, if the probability distribution is
unknown, a rectangular distribution is commonly assumed. Bur-
rows et al. 共2000兲 used a rectangular distribution, while Alegre
共1992兲 used the normal distribution to describe the variability of
water consumption at a node. For the modeling of water con-
sumption at a property level, Buchberger and Wu 共1995兲 used a
Poisson rectangular pulse process. Xu and Goulter 共1998兲 sug-
gested the use of the normal distribution not only for the nodal
demands but also for the reservoir levels and pipe roughness, in
order to examine the reliability of a water distribution system.
However, they introduced a probabilistic hydraulic model that
considered only instantaneous simulation.
The present work investigates the propagation of uncertainties
due to variable demand, which is considered to have the highest
uncertainty, through the hydraulic model in order to examine the
range of probable states of the system variables 共i.e., pressures
and flows兲. The developed stochastic model links Monte Carlo
simulation, which generates demand scenarios, with the hydraulic
simulator. As a result, the sensitivity of all elements 共e.g., pipes兲
to variations in consumption can be determined. Sensitivity is
defined as the ability of the system to respond to changes in
demand or operational parameters that might occur during regular
operation of the system. Coefficient of variance was chosen as the
uncertainty indicator in order to group the network elements ac-
cording to sensitivity to probable changes in the input data.
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Data Collection
This work focuses on data collected at the property level, since
these data are in a basic form and all conclusions about other data
types can be drawn from this analysis. Flow measurements at the
property level can be divided in two major groups: data on the use
of individual appliances and total domestic consumption for each
property. In this respect, it was necessary to discover the stochas-
tic features in the data set. A study of domestic use of appliances
was available, as described by Butler and Graham 共1995兲. A week
of diary data for 33 houses was collected and analyzed to examine
the features of water consumption. The data set contains informa-
tion on the following appliances: bath, shower, washbasin,
kitchen sink, washing machine, toilet, bidet, and dishwasher.
Houses were selected according to the number of occupants since
it is clear that water consumption varies significantly with this
number 共Martin et al. 1994兲. The contribution of other relevant
factors, such as socioeconomic group or weather, were not taken
into consideration due to the small sample size, short period of
record, and the focus of this study on domestic indoor water use
only.
The stochastic nature of water demand was analyzed with re-
gard to the frequency, intensity, and duration of the use of appli-
ances. This approach is similar to the method used by Buchberger
and Wells 共1996兲, with the major difference being the analysis of
domestic appliances in this case, rather than total water consumed
in the property. The number of houses with the corresponding
Table 1. Number of Houses Monitored with Corresponding Number
of Occupants
Number of Number of
occupants houses
1 6
2 8
3 3
4 8
5 3
 Table 2. Chi-Square Test for all Appliances for 8 a.m.
Appliance ␭ ␯ 兺 kj⫽1 关 (N j ⫺N p j ) 2 /Np j 兴 ␹ 95
2 a

Bath 0.357 1 0.038 3.841

Kitchen sink 0.392 1 3.582 3.841
Shower 0.397 2 4.568 5.991
Washing basin 1.136 4 5.756 9.488
WC 0.958 4 5.901 9.488
Washing machine 0.214 1 0.439 3.841
a
Note: ␹ 95
2
has to be greater than 兺 kj⫽1 关 (N j ⫺N p j ) 2 /Np j 兴 for the success-
ful outcome of the chi-square test.
Secondly, the data have been analyzed in detail taking into
account the number of occupants in monitored properties. The
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Fig. 2. Frequency of bath usage for all households per hour
number of occupants is presented in Table 1. Due to incomplete
data records, five houses out of 33 were discarded at the begin-
ning of data analysis, leaving the 28 shown.
Frequency of Usage
The frequency of usage of appliances was first analyzed on an
hourly basis for all properties, without taking into account the
number of occupiers. The number of events was counted for
every hour and every day of the week. A major question is
whether the Poisson distribution should be used for modeling of
data that represent the number of occurrences in a given unit of
time or space, which corresponds herein to the number of uses per
hour. This assumption was examined by calculating the mean of
the Poisson distribution for the number of uses per hour and using
the chi-square test for every appliance.
An example from the data analysis for the bath appliance is
shown below. Fig. 2 represents the sum of usage of one appliance
for all 28 houses over 24 h as recorded in the study. As can be
seen in this figure, for every hour, most of the data lie in the range
of one standard deviation, and water appliance usage varies with
time of day. Hence it is concluded that a standard water usage
pattern does not exist in reality.
Support for the applicability of a Poisson discrete probability
distribution model is shown in Fig. 3共a兲 for the bath. From the
original data set, the mean of the Poisson distribution was calcu-
lated for every appliance and every hour. An example of the chi-
square test result for 8 a.m., summarized in Table 2, confirms the
fit of the Poisson distribution to the average number of uses per
hour.
probability of use of a particular appliance over 24 h on an hourly
basis was derived by calculation of the mean of the Poisson dis-
tribution from the houses with the same occupancy. One of the
shortcomings of this data set is that it is not possible to derive any
information on weekly variation of water usage, since only one
week of data was available. Also, no seasonal trend could be
detected which was considered to be reasonable since the study
focused on indoor use only. Therefore all days of the week have
been considered without any difference, although it is clear that
the behavior of water demand changes significantly at weekends.
It must be stressed that the purpose of this study was to develop a
methodology for improved processing and utilization of domestic
water consumption information, which can be applied by a water
utility using probability functions specific for a particular region
and day of the week, rather than to derive a standard consumption
pattern. Also, the study did not include investigation of similar
probabilistic features of large industrial and commercial users. It
was assumed that their consumption is regularly monitored and
therefore less uncertain.
Finally, Poisson distributions were derived for every appli-
ance, hour of the day, and occupancy rate. Probabilities for the
same number of uses but different occupancy rates were com-
pared. It can be seen that for the same number of uses per hour
共i.e., zero uses in Fig. 4兲, a similar pattern for every occupancy
rate can be recognized, which confirms data consistency and ap-
plicability for the subsequent prediction of demand. Similar
graphs have been produced for all appliances and all occupancy
rates.
Duration and Flow Rates
People participating in the study were also asked to record the
duration of the use of the appliances. Regarding the flows, the

Fig. 3. Frequency, duration, and flow of bath use

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Fig. 4. Probability of ‘‘zero’’ use per hour of the washing basin over
24 h and different occupancy rate 共i.e., 4⫽four occupants per prop-
erty兲
appliances had to be tested for the most probable flows occurring
during one use. The most probable flows were measured volu-
metrically on at least three occasions for each of the appliances in
each of the houses. From the sample of measured flows, probabil-
ity distribution functions were then derived for each of the appli-
ances, for both duration and flow. As all of the participants were
involved in this process and there were no major deviations in
measured flows and durations, it is believed that the reliability of
this data set is reasonable.
It is not expected that data collated in the form of a histogram
can be fitted to a particular probability distribution function, since
this is a complex process that depends on the nature of the appli-
ance. For example, the duration of bath use is likely to be within
the range of 120– 400 s, while longer periods are associated with
a low probability of occurrence. This is shown in Fig. 3共b兲. The
flow rate recorded during the study for the bath is shown in Fig.
3共c兲.
Model Development and Procedure
A stochastic model was developed combining EPANET, the hy-
draulic simulator developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency 共2000兲, and an algorithm for random sampling of the use
of appliances for the development of demand patterns. The model
aims at examining the probable range of the pipe flows in a net-
work by incorporating known variations of appliance usage fre-
quency, duration, and flow. It was assumed that the frequency of
appliance usage, its duration, and flow could take any value
within the range obtained from the consumption measurements. A
random demand pattern for each property in the network is ob-
tained by combining these three stochastic parameters for each
time step. These demand patterns are then used as an input to the
hydraulic simulation. Using Monte Carlo simulation, a water sup-
ply network model is repeatedly simulated. The hydraulic time
step used in the simulations, which was chosen to account for the
shortest duration of all events recorded during the study, was 1
min. Thus demands attached to all nodes are changed in order to
perform different scenarios of regular water usage. For every sce-
nario, the possible usage of appliances is taken into account and
the frequency, duration, and intensity of their use is attached to
individual properties. For the purpose of this study, it was as-
sumed that these three stochastic parameters are independent.
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More details on correlation analysis carried out can be found in
Janković-Nišić 共2002兲. In this way, the range of all events 共flows兲,
which can be expected during the regular daily operation of the
system, is obtained. This procedure is shown schematically in Fig.
5. The statistical analysis of outputs gives the limits, which cor-
respond to the first standard deviation 共high and low limits兲 or
second standard deviation 共high-high and low-low limits兲 over 24
h of operation.
Monte Carlo Simulation
Once the discrete probability functions for the frequency of usage
and the continuous probability mass functions duration and flow
are established, the Monte Carlo random number generator
samples from the cumulative probability functions to match the
level of consumption for a particular hour. For the random num-
ber generation procedure, a modified algorithm for the inverse
transform method 共Rubinstein 1981; Fishman 1996兲 was used. As
described previously, Poisson random number sampling was em-
ployed for the simulation of frequency of usage per hour. In the
case where a particular distribution can be used, the number of
values that need to be used decreases to the number of statistical
parameters needed to describe the probability distribution. Here,
only one parameter, the mean of the population, is sufficient to
totally define the Poisson distribution. For the duration and flows,
the original discrete distributions were utilized. The use of origi-
nal distributions as recorded in the study decreases the error that
can be induced by fitting a particular distribution. However, one
must bear in mind that storing a large number of values signifi-
cantly increases computational time.
Since some appliances have a short duration of usage, the
preparation of input data on a 1 min basis is necessary. This also
highlights the uncertainties involved in analysis of the influence
of temporal smoothing deployed when deriving demand patterns
for modeling.
Description of the developed algorithm is given in Fig. 6. The
algorithm consists of two parts: random demand pattern simulator
and hydraulic simulator. For every simulation, a set of nodes is
extracted from the EPANET input files that contain the network
input data. To facilitate this process, several dynamic link librar-
ies 共dll兲 developed also by the EPA were used. Node consumption
is modeled as a sum of consumptions of individual properties.
Depending on the occupancy rate, a daily demand pattern is de-
rived for every property by sampling from the feature probability
distributions derived from the demand study. Thus for every event
共i.e., use of a certain appliance兲 occurring at certain time instances
during a 24 h period, duration and flow are sampled from the
derived probability distributions. In this way, the daily demand
pattern for each property changes from one simulation to another.
The aggregate of all the property demand patterns for each
node is entered into the hydraulic simulation and flows for all
pipes are obtained. This process is repeated until the statistics
共e.g., mean value for each time interval兲 of all simulated pipe
flows become stable. Convergence of the average flow for a se-
lected pipe with a number of iterations is given in Fig. 7. Ap-
proximately 100 simulations are needed to achieve a stable mean
value. The final result is obtained as a range of flows calculated at
each time step and for each pipe.
Case Study Network
A real water distribution network consisting of 402 nodes and 439
pipes was chosen for testing of the methodology described herein.
From the pumping station, water is supplied to a reservoir with a
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Fig. 5. Data flow schematic

capacity of 2,273 m3 and further by gravity to the consumers. The
total number of 3,552 properties is split into three mainly residen-
tial DMAs. The balance of water entering and leaving the DMAs
is controlled by a total of six flow meters installed at the bound-
aries. Every DMA is therefore controlled with a maximum of
three flow meters. The hydraulic model of the case study water
distribution network is constructed as an all-mains model, exclud-
ing only lateral pipes 共from the mains to individual users兲. The
case study water distribution network is shown in Fig. 12.
Analysis of Uncertainty Propagation Results
As outlined above, the development and establishment of patterns
for consumer demands require the estimation of demand alloca-
tion and its variability. The hydraulic simulator was linked to the
Monte Carlo random demand pattern simulator to support the
initial hypothesis about the representation of water demands and
propagation of its uncertainty through the model. The influence of
the number of properties attached to a node of the network model
is examined here as part of the analysis of input data uncertainty.
Taking into account the number of people in the houses and the

Fig. 6. Comparison of 1 min and hourly averaged pattern for five Fig. 7. Average flow and relative error with the number of simula-
properties tions for the Monte Carlo procedure

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Fig. 8. Ratio between maximum and average demand for the peak
hour against number of properties attached to a node
variability of use of appliances described in the data section, the
conclusions and targets achieved can be summarized as follows.
The use of water is recognized as an intermittent stochastic
function rather than a standard deterministic continuous function,
as is used typically in all network models. Fig. 6 shows one
possible scenario of use of water for five properties on a 1 min
basis (Q minute). When the demand pattern was further averaged on
an hourly basis (Q hour), the ratio between the 1 min and the
averaged demand in peak hour is shown to be significant.
For example, for the peak hour, the ratio between the 1 min
maximum and the averaged demand tends to decrease as the num-
ber of attached properties increases 共see Fig. 8兲. The ratio is not
always the same for a certain number of properties 共i.e., flow兲, as
it is a function of uncertain use of water and occupancy rate in
properties. Therefore the trend line in Fig. 8 is only displayed to
show the tendency. The conclusions that can be drawn are two-
fold: first, the accuracy of the estimation of net flow to a DMA
depends on a DMA size, and second, the more properties that are
attached to one node the more likely the flow in the mains is to
be smoothed. These conclusions enable quantification of how
‘‘smoothed’’ the flows are and raise the question of how many
properties can be attached to a node such that the simplification of
the network does not influence the calculated demand patterns for
individual properties.
Frequency of Data Collection
Furthermore, the intermittent nature of the water consumption
pattern raises another question of what should be the appropriate
frequency of data collection at a property level in order to obtain
a reliable picture of water consumption pattern. Thus using 1 h
snapshots would be unsuitable for this purpose since considerable
data would be overlooked. For example, for the water used in one
property with the occupancy number equal to 4, the difference
between the calculated total water used over 24 h for the 1 h
snapshot readings and accumulative reading is approximately
40%. Therefore data must be collected in cumulative form where,
again, the time discretization depends on the purpose of the mea-
surements taken. If the only objective is the billing of water then
it would be sufficient to collect flow measurements on a daily
basis in order to detect changes that might occur. If the aim is to
acquire more detailed information about customers and their
water use pattern, the recommended time of discretization needed
should be much shorter. Fig. 9 shows the ratio between the maxi-
mum, and the averaged, water use pattern against the time step for
three properties with the same occupancy rate. Due to expected
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Fig. 9. Ratio between the maximum and the averaged demand
pattern against the time step for three properties with the same
occupancy rate
variability of demand, this ratio varies from one property to an-
other, even though they have the same occupancy rate. Also, it
can be seen that for the time steps larger than 15 min the ratio can
be quite high and therefore cannot be neglected at this level of
monitoring.
Selection of Time Step
In order to examine the appropriate time step for the monitoring
of DMAs, and to perform uncertainty analysis for the recommen-
dation of the most suitable spatial distribution of metering de-
vices, a Monte Carlo simulation technique was used. The devel-
oped technique has been linked to a hydraulic model as described
previously. Again, snapshots with an inappropriate time step can
lead to an inaccurate demand calculation and therefore cumula-
tive data collection is recommended. This accumulated flow 共ex-
pressed in liters兲, is further normally averaged and normalized to
obtain a water consumption pattern, which will be used for mod-
eling. The time step over which the volumetric flow is averaged
influences the calculated flow.
From Fig. 8, it can be seen that an increased number of moni-
tored properties leads to smoothing of the monitored flow. In
addition, it is very important to examine how the size of the
monitoring area affects the time step used for monitoring in order
to obtain the least possible deterioration of the pattern used later
for modeling. The effect of time averaging is represented in the
form of a ratio between maximum and averaged flow in the cer-
tain time interval 共here, the peak hour兲. The effect of time aver-
aging is shown to decline as the number of monitored properties
increases 共see Fig. 10兲. However, the effect is still evident as the
time step increases. Due to the stochastic nature of water demand,
the ratio between the maximum and the averaged flow for the
peak hour never reaches one, regardless of the size of the moni-
tored area. For example, for 257 monitored properties the ratio for
a 2 h time step is still approximately 1.5. If the graphs were
extended to 24 h, the ratio would represent the daily peak ratio
that is known in the literature to depend mainly on the number of
properties 共Alegre 1992; Lingireddy et al. 1998兲. From the same
figure it can be observed that the time step of 15 min has approxi-
mately the same influence on the time averaging effect regardless
of the size of the monitoring sample.
It must be noted that Fig. 10 was plotted for the pipes from a
real case study and obviously the ratio can be different for differ-
ent pipes and for different demand scenarios. It is remarkable,
however, that for areas larger than 30 properties the smoothing of
 Fig. 10. Ratio between maximum and average demand against the
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time step for different district metering area sizes 共number of prop-
erties兲
the demand pattern due to averaging has an insignificant influence
at a data collection time of 15 min. It is therefore recommended
that a 15 min time step would be the most appropriate for moni-
toring of DMAs in order to use the measured flow for modeling
of pipe flows in water distribution networks.
Sensitivity of Pipes
After a sufficient number of iterations of Monte Carlo have been
performed, the statistical features of the state variables can be
extracted. Thus the confidence interval for the probable state vari-
ables can be derived as a range of plus or minus one standard
deviation. It was hypothesized that the width of that range mainly
depends on the position of a pipe in the topology of the network.
This analysis aims to investigate the sensitivity of the pipes to the
changes in the system and, in this way, to recommend the location
of the metering devices in the system. It must not be mistaken
with classical sensitivity analysis since in the case here, all the
parameters are changed at the same time in order to examine the
propagation of uncertainty of parameters or input variables
through the model. In the classical sensitivity analysis the inten-
tion is to derive a sensitivity matrix where every element repre-
sents the change of a state variable due to the change of only one
parameter at a time 共Xu and Goulter 1998兲.
In this study, the sensitivity of the pipes can be expressed in
the form of the coefficient of variation, the ratio between the
standard deviation and the average of the flow for each pipe. The
coefficient was calculated for every minute. Thus the variation of
2 L/s for a pipe carrying 40 L/s has less significance than the
same amount for the pipe of 5 L/s capacity.
For every hour, the average coefficient of variation is calcu-
lated, since it would be difficult to judge from the coefficients
calculated for every minute; these have an intermittent nature
originating from the nature of the demand patterns. Coefficients
of variation are compared for three pipes with the following lo-
cations in the network: pipe 1 supplying four houses, pipe 2 at the
outlet of the reservoir, and pipe 3 as a part of the ring main 共see
Fig. 11兲. Evidently, pipe 1 has much higher values of the coeffi-
cient of variation than the other two pipes. The coefficient of
variation also varies with the time of the day. The other two pipes
have significantly lower coefficients of variation, which suggests
that the sensitivity of the pipes can be related to their disposition
within the network. The next step is therefore to evaluate all pipes
within the network to examine whether certain rules can be ap-
plied regarding disposition of pipes and their sensitivity. Fig. 12
represents the calculated coefficient of variation at 3 a.m. when
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J. Water Resour. Plann. Manage. 2004.130:171-179.
Fig. 11. Comparison of coefficients of variance for three pipes
the minimum daily demand is expected to occur. The pipes are
divided into six categories depending on the calculated value of
the coefficient of variation.
As can be observed from Fig. 12, the pipe leading from the
reservoir has the lowest coefficient of variation. The flow through
this pipe represents the total consumption of the system. By
evaluating the coefficients of variation for the pipes supplying
three existing DMAs, it can be concluded that they have approxi-
mately the same sensitivity. Additionally, by comparing all pipes
that are supplying the same number of properties, they can be
classified in the same group. Generally, as the size of the moni-
tored DMA increases, the coefficient of variation decreases. The
highest values can therefore be found for the pipes supplying
individual properties. In this way, Fig. 12 can be used to facilitate
the definition of DMA borders, by selecting the pipes with the
same sensitivity for possible flow meter locations.
Conclusions
The major conclusion from the frequency analysis is that the
Poisson distribution should be used for modeling data that repre-
sent the number of occurrences in a given unit of time or space; in
this case, the number of uses of each appliance per hour. No
particular distribution could be fitted to the probability distribu-
tions of the flow and duration.
The water demand pattern obtained by normalizing total sys-
tem flow cannot be applied for modeling at the very fine ‘‘level’’
of a single property. The error introduced by doing this can be
significant. The problem should be dealt with by analyzing the
consumption of each property rather than deriving the average
pattern out of the aggregate figure.
When analyzing statistical properties of the flows obtained
from the Monte Carlo simulation the following can be concluded.
Generally, the lower the coefficient of variation is, the less the
sensitivity of the pipe. From the propagation of uncertainties, it
can be seen that pipes that are supplying large DMAs are less
sensitive to changes of demand. Therefore the pipes closer to the
source are less sensitive to the changes. Additionally, the mains
are less sensitive to the changes in the network. Therefore any
sudden burst or background leakage that is of the same order of
magnitude as the domestic consumption would be difficult to de-
tect. In Fig. 12 these are represented by the lightest gray color
code. On the other hand, the more properties that are monitored
the effect of time averaging is reduced. These two opposing ef-
fects require further study in order to establish a methodology for
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Fig. 12. Sensitivity of pipes 共coefficient of variance, Cv兲

finding an optimal size of DMA to be monitored. Nevertheless, it Notation

is recommended that the size of the monitored area should be
The following symbols are used in this paper:
smaller than it is now typically in operational practice of water
k ⫽ number of classes;
utilities, and that it should be determined for every distribution
N ⫽ sample size;
network independently. For the distribution network described in
N j ⫽ number of events for the jth category, j
this work and taking into account the conclusions from Figs. 8
⫽1,2,...,k;
and 10, the recommended size would be around 250 properties.
N p j ⫽ expected number of events for the jth
The number of DMAs would, in this case, increase to approxi-
category;
mately 15 consequently requiring a higher number of instruments
p ⫽ number of parameters of the theoretical
installed on the borders of the DMAs.
distribution;
This analysis has only considered the effect of changes in de-
p j ⫽ expected probability for the jth category;
mand and further work is required to investigate the variability of
␭ ⫽ mean of the Poisson probability density
other parameters and include them in sensitivity analysis. In ad-
function;
dition, it must be emphasized that the quality of the results de-
␯⫽k⫺p⫺1 ⫽ number of degrees of freedom; and
pends on the quality of the input data sets available, and future
␹ 295 ⫽ chi-square for the 95% confidence.
studies are planned that will be based on data from a more exten-
sive domestic consumption study.
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