Digital Transformation Paradigm for Asset
Management in Water Distribution Networks
Francesco Gino Ciliberti
Luigi Berardi
Department of Engineering and Geology
D’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara
Pescara, Italy
francesco.ciliberti@unich.it
2021 10th International Conference on ENERGY and ENVIRONMENT (CIEM) | 978-1-6654-4584-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/CIEM52821.2021.9614864
luigi.berardi@unich.it
Abstract— This work proposes a novel structured paradigm for
digital transformation for Water Distribution Network asset
management. The novel framework has been developed by
integrating the Digital Twin concept with well-established
algorithms and methodologies, to support technicians and water
utilities in solving Water Distribution Networks life-cycle
management issues. The digital water services, implemented in
the WDNetXL/WDNetGIS platform, provide such integration as
to support users on specific technical tasks. Two of these
services, recently adopted to support real-life asset management
design on several WDN, are briefly presented: the Digital Water
DMA Analyzer supports the analysis and customization for the
design of district metering areas, aimed WDN monitoring and
leakage reduction through pressure control; the Digital Water
Rehabilitation enables the creation of pipes replacements
planning, returning explicit performances in terms of leakages
reduction a efficiency.
Index Terms-- Digital Twin, Water Distribution Network, GIS,
Complex Networks
I. MOTIVATIONS
The pervasive use of technology in all sectors of private
and professional life is changing the approach to solving
problems exploiting the integration of multiple sources of
information within tools that provide fast responses to users.
This comes from the exceptional acceleration in technological
advancements in the last years, where fast communication
networks and unprecedented computing capabilities allow
implementing complex algorithms into software services
running even on portable devices. Fingerprint or facial
recognition on smartphones, are such examples, where users
are even not aware about the complexity behind them, but just
use such services to secure their data.
In Water Distribution Network (WDN) management, ICT
and IoT in the last 20 years have been opening several
opportunities for gathering, processing, and analyzing data,
even using smart sensors, to improve the knowledge of WDN
978-1-6654-4584-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
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Daniele Biagio Laucelli
Orazio Giustolisi
Department of Civil, Environmental, Land, Building
Engineering and Chemistry
Technical University of Bari
Bari, Italy
danielebiagio.laucelli@poliba.it
orazio.giustolisi@poliba.it
and support their efficient management. The advent of GIS,
WEB-GIS and BIM (Building Information Modeling) in water
infrastructure sector also provided new perspectives for
approaching technical problems based on an integrated digital
view of all built elements, within their working environment.
In addition, in the last two decades, several advancements
in hydraulic modelling have been produced to support WDN
asset management, providing increasingly accurate and
physically based representation of the complex
phenomenology of such infrastructures. Hydraulic model is
the main representation of WDN within algorithms to support
the solution of various technical problems, e.g., including the
design of new systems, design of district monitoring areas
(DMA), optimize controls, or plan effective rehabilitation.
Nowadays, the concept of digital transition in WDN
management has still not a consensus, although technologies
are available along with advancements on hydraulic modelling
and methodologies/procedures to solve specific technical
problems. This framework is opening an exciting era of
innovation to fill the gap between the existing advancements
and the responses needed by final users to solve real-life
technical problems. Such a process should move from the
advancements in technical areas of WDN planning and
management, firmly based on engineering approach, to exploit
the opportunities from the latest and upcoming technologies.
This work proposes a novel paradigm to pursue the digital
transformation in WDN asset management sector. It involves
the integration into digital water services of the WDN Digital
Twin, information from data, even using artificial intelligence
techniques, and methodologies/procedures to solve specific
technical problems. The two main pre-requisites to make
digital water services useful for technicians are: (i) all digital
services should run on widely adopted and used platforms for
data management and visualization; (ii) tools should expose
explicit results to support technical activities (e.g., reports,
design layouts, metric calculations, etc.).
 This framework has been implemented for the first time in
WDN management area, as it is of direct relevance for water
companies, national and international regulatory bodies and
for sustainability of all human activities in urban areas.
Indeed, in many parts of the world, urban networks have
ended their technical life and the infrastructure deterioration
and water losses have become serious threats in terms of
resources consumptions and quality of service. After the
introduction of regulatory directives in the most part of EU
countries, water utilities are applying methodologies and plans
to improve WDNs efficiency and reliability. In Italy, the
Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and Environment
(ARERA) [1] has defined several principles for ensuring the
efficiency and reliability of WDNs; in particular, it has
introduced a tariff method for water utilities based on
minimum levels of technical and commercial quality of
services, e.g., water losses (M1), water quality and service
interruptions.
After providing some details about the proposed digital
transformation paradigm, this work presents the
implementation into digital water services that were used to
support consultant companies to design optimal DMA,
pressure control and rehabilitation in about 20 real WDN
locate in Apulian region, Italy (as in [2]). In particular, two
services are here presented, developed as QGIS plugins:
“Digital Water DMA Analyzer”, aimed at analyzing and
supporting the design of DMA integrated with pressure
control for leakage reduction based on strategy in[3]; and
“Digital Water Rehabilitation”, which support the impact of
asset rehabilitation of WDNs by evaluating optimal
replacement pipes plans, integrating also the propensity to leak
from data-modelling techniques [4][5].
II. DIGITAL TRASFORMATION IN WDN: AN OVERVIEW
Digital Twin (DT), introduced by Grieves [6] and first
applied in the industry to prototype efficiency and by NASA
[7], is a digital representation of a product, such as object,
machine or service, or unique product-service system that
comprises its characteristics by means of models, information,
and data across multiple life cycle phases. DT technologies
allows creating a virtual duplicate of a real system, to simulate
and review activities and consequences of different decision
within the real system. In industry, DT technologies are
applied for improving productivity and consequently quality
of services [8].
The DT concept consists of three parts: the physical layer,
the digital layer, and connections between the two layers. The
connections are represented by data and models that flow from
the physical layer to the digital layer and information that is
available from the digital layer to the physical environment.
In the WDNs context, the physical layer is represented by
the network, its devices and the hydraulic status of the real
infrastructure. All such elements are reported in the digital
layer as a virtual representation of all geometric/material
features and relevant network connectivity, which are linked
to the hydraulic model.
In the last years, the application of Digital Twin
technology in WDNs is taking the first steps. The preliminary
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experiments on cyber-physical systems [9], developed a data-
driven framework for water quality, and smart WDNs testbed
for event-driven control of failure scenarios [10]. Later, a DT
was created [11] for a water company, based on simplified
virtual representation of WDN planning, with functionalities
of simulating past and future hydraulic scenarios. Although all
those approaches have been valuable for the first-stage
elaboration of the DT architecture and the classification of
main priorities which can work out, they are still not able to
integrate the phenomenological representation of WDNs using
advanced modelling and do not entail a vision to provide
practical support to solve technical problems.
In the 20th century, a giant step has been taken in the
computer science: an ever-growing interest in the automatic
problem-solving spread all over the scientific and industrial
fields of application, including Water Distribution Networks
(WDNs) applications. The major challenges dealt in
developing tools for hydraulic analysis and
methodologies/algorithms to support management tasks. In the
digital transformation, such models and algorithms are
supposed to provide the linkage between the virtual layer and
the real layer.
On hydraulic modelling side, in the last 30 years WDN
asset management posed several novel challenges with respect
to the original models born to support the design and
verification of WDN ex novo. The increasing level of
leakages, the growing of urban areas and the raising number
of failures due to asset deterioration, unveiled the unsuitability
of demand-driven analysis, like that implemented in
EPANET-based software [12]. WDN hydraulic modelling to
support asset management provides a phenomenological
representation of WDNs hydraulics, overcoming the limits of
classical modeling of EPANET-based software. The main
advancements include: the modelling of leakages as function
of pipe average pressure and deterioration at single pipe level
[13]; the pressure-driven modelling of different types of users’
connections, i.e., direct connection to WDNs, free orifices,
inline private tanks; the stable modelling of water level
variation in tanks; the consistent modelling of controls and
devices, such as pumps, pressure reduction valves (PRVs),
Variable Speed Pumps (VSPs). The application of such
models on real WDNs was demonstrated to support the
planning of leakage management actions [2].
Several algorithms and methodologies were reported in
literature to support various WDN management tasks and an
exhaustive list of contributions cannot be reported here. About
the integration with Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is worth
recalling the introduction of Genetic Algorithms in the latest
nineties, to solving WDNs optimization problems (e.g. [14])
in different areas like, for example, the automatic network
design or the design of rehabilitation plans. Moreover, the
increasing availability of filed data from water companies
motivated the introduction of various data modelling
techniques to extract information from data. This is the case of
models of propensity to fail (e.g. [5]) or to detect pressure and
flow anomalies in WDNs (e.g. [15]).
In the last years great attention was also devoted to the
introduction of Complex Network Theory (CNT), to analyze
 the main graph properties of WDN, and to exploit the
potentialities of CNT metrics, although tailored for WDN [16]
to support asset management.
III. DIGITAL TWIN AND DIGITAL WATER SERVICES FOR
WDN ASSET MANAGEMENT
The novel paradigm for digital transformation is based on
combining the Digital Twin of the WDN with algorithms and
methodologies that explicitly provide variables of direct
technical relevance.
The DT of the WDN integrates the virtual representation
of all geometric/physical elements of a water infrastructure
with the phenomenological representation of the system based
on advanced hydraulic modelling.
Classical approach to hydraulic modelling requires that
several elements should be set by the user before model run
(e.g., patterns, hydraulic resistances, boundary conditions as
the initial level in tanks, etc.). Therefore, to get useful results,
the user should be aware about all parameters set at the
beginning of the simulation and, more important, he/she
should know which equations are solved in model routines
and relevant limitations. Such classic modelling approach is
mandatory when the hydraulic model is based on simplified
assumptions, like that in EPANET-base software.
The availability of advanced hydraulic models, like that
mentioned in previous section, provides a phenomenological
representation of the systems, which is quite closer to the real
hydraulic of WDN and is consistent with the requisites to
support asset management tasks. Therefore, beside the
classical approach, the model provides a virtual object that
reproduces the WDN functioning under changing conditions,
in the same conceptual way as a line on a map represent a
pipe. Once the model is set (e.g., through calibration [17]), it
is integrated in the virtual representation of the WDN in the
DT.
Depending on the specific technical purpose, the DT is
recalled within algorithms that provide results of direct
relevance for the user only. The integration of the DT within
ad hoc algorithms/procedures represents a digital water
services (DWS), which should be implemented in a
Geographic Information System (GIS) platform to be easily
accessible by the user. The GIS platform is the main
development environment for deploying the paradigm: it
provides the technology to create relations between
georeferenced features of the network and hydraulic
modelling, and it enables visualization and sharing
information.
Such novel paradigm goes beyond the implementation of a
single functionality on a GIS platform, which requires a
technological transfer process only, and provides the basis for
many DWS which can be developed in conjunction with final
user. This, in turn is expected to start a virtuous cooperation
between technical-scientific research and real-life users, also
promoting the integration of new technologies for data
gathering and analysis (e.g., smart metering).
In WDN asset management field, few DWS have been
implemented and used so far to support each phase of the
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design solution, from WDN model calibration to DMA design
and planning of pipe rehabilitation.
The DWS was implemented in the WDNetXL/WDNetGIS
platform [18][19] which enables and advanced hydraulic
model for WDNs and includes tools and data-driven and
modelling methodologies for managing the short and long-
period management tasks typically faced by water utilities,
such as bursts analysis and prediction, leakage, and pressure
control along the WDNs, rehabilitation planning, pumping
energy optimization, water quality monitoring, etc.
Next section provides two examples of DWS developed to
support the selection of various configuration of DMA design
for pressure control (Digital Water DMA Analyzer) and the
planning of rehabilitation works (Digital Water
Rehabilitation), implemented as QGIS software plugin.
A. Digital Water DMA Analyzer
The network division into districts metering areas
(DMAs) enables monitoring the water entering and leaving
the district. This mass balance at DMA level provides the
assessment of level of leakages and possible early detection
of anomalies.
The DMAs design strategy implemented in the
WDNetXL/WDNetGIS platform has been proposed by [3]. It
is a two-step methodology based on: (i) topological
segmentation, aimed at identifying conceptual cuts between
network segments/modules that maximize the similarity in
term of length or elevation, using a tailored modularity index
[20], and (ii) a hydraulic DMA design, where flow meters
and closed gates are inserted in the conceptual cuts, such that
the number of meters and water losses are simultaneously
minimized while delivering sufficient water to consumers, in
through a multi-objective optimization.
The Digital Water DMA Analyzer is meant as a DWS for
evaluating and customizing the configuration of DMA. Users
can load the virtual layer of the WDN and the optimal DMA
design solutions, as generated by the WDNetXL/WDNetGIS
platform, through the GUI in (Figure1) and visualize on the
GIS map canvas the features and devices represented by the
DT of the WDN (Figure 2). The same figure also shows that
water balance and the assessment of linear leakage indicator
M1a (m3/km/day) is returned for each DMA.
Figure 1. Digital Water DMA Analyzer Graphic User Interface.
 B. Digital Water Rehabilitation
The DWS called Digital Water Rehabilitation provides the
generation and visualization of optimal rehabilitation plans of
WDNs. Users can import the digital layer of the WDN from
the Graphic User Interface (GUI) of the service (Figure 5) and
visualize the features and properties of the real WDN on the
map canvas.

Figure 2. DMAs and devices visualization on map canvas.

Users can study and visualize several DMAs solutions,

select one and modify the status of the flow meters using the
“Enable”/“Disable” buttons. The integration with DT enables
to analyze each flow meter in terms of expected velocity and
flow (Figure 3), to detect the most effective location of
meters looking at metrological constraints. Based on users’
selection of the previous step, the service allows the check the
new DMA configuration and estimate the new DMAs balance
figures using the hydraulic model embedded in the DT Figure 5. Digital Water Rehabilitation Graphic User Interface.
(Figure 4).
To achieve a rehabilitation plan of the WDN, users can
select from import menu a set of optimally defined plans,
which are identified to maximize the efficiency of replacement
in terms of expected reduction of volumetric leakages, based
on advanced hydraulic modelling, and relevant cost of
replacement. In addition, the user can create a new plan or
customize an existing one, to evaluate the expected
rehabilitation performances from technical requirements and
economic constraints. Pipes can be selected directly from the
map canvas of GIS software (Figure 6) and the minimum
diameter of replaced pipes can be also set.

Figure 3. Flow and velocity patterns plot.

Figure 6. M1a layer visualization: leakage rate at each pipe is represented

by a graduated symbology.

After importing the hydraulic model from DT and defining

an optimal plan, the hydraulic model returns the performance
indicators expected after replacement, such as the reduction of
Figure 4. User-defined DMAs creation. daily leakage volume, average pressure, etc., which provides

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 the improvement of the hydraulic capability of the network,
the efficiency of the planning in terms of mechanical and
economical constraints. The selection of pipes for
rehabilitation is also supported by the identification of linear
leakages indicator M1a for each (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Representation of results and identification of replaced pipes.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper a novel paradigm to pursue the digital
transformation in WDN asset management sector is presented.
It builds upon the idea of integrating a new concept of Digital
Twin of WDN with procedures/algorithm ad hoc to support
various management tasks, including artificial intelligence
strategies that might exploit data collected from ICT/IoT
systems. Such integration give rise to the DWSs conceived to
provide explicit support technical problems solving, and
allows flexible analysis for the operational, tactical and
strategic management tasks of WDNs management.
The DWSs represent the tools directly eligible by
operators (managers, planners, consultants) in various WDNs
management phases, such as planning, executive design,
emergencies remediation. The Digital Water Services
presented herein have been implemented in the
WDNetXL/WDNetGIS platform, as GIS plugins.
Two of several services involved in the DT have been
exposed. The Digital Water DMA Analyzer allows analyzing
several districts configurations and modify the segmentation
by enabling or disabling the flow meters located in the
network, considering technical and economical constraints
defined by the water utilities or users. DWSs have been used
in real-life technical applications. The Digital Water
Rehabilitation is developed as a service for pipes replacement
planning, created by users or defined by an existing optimal
plan. The service allows estimating and visualizing the WDN
hydraulic behavior after the replacement, as well as defining
the achievements in terms of leakage reduction.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors acknowledge the contributions of IDEA-RT
for providing the pictures from WDNetXL/WDNetGIS
software.
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