Digital twin-based resilience evaluation and intelligent strategies of smart urban water distribution networks for emergency management

Abstract

Resilient smart urban water distribution networks are essential to ensure smooth urban operation and maintain daily water services. However, the dynamics and complexity of smart water distribution networks make its resilience study face many challenges. The introduction of digital twin technology provides an innovative solution for the resilience study of smart water distribution networks, which can more effectively support the network's real-time monitoring and intelligent control. This paper proposes a digital twin architecture of smart water distribution networks, laying the foundation for the resilience assessment of water distribution networks. Based on this, a performance evaluation model based on user satisfaction is proposed, which can more intuitively and effectively reflect the performance of urban water supply services. Meanwhile, we propose a method to quantify the importance of water distribution pipes' residual resilience, considering the time value to optimize the recovery sequence of failed pipes and develop targeted preventive maintenance strategies. Finally, to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, this paper applies it to a water distribution network. The results show that the proposed method can significantly improve the resilience and enhance the overall resilience of smart urban water distribution networks.

Keywords

Digital twin / Smart water distribution network / Resilience evaluation / Importance measure

Relevance to Resilience

This paper investigates the resilience of WDNs from a dynamic perspective. A WDNs resilience assessment model was established based on the performance indicators considering the number of users served. Utilizing this residual resilience model, a method for quantifying the residual resilience importance of water distribution pipes considering time value is proposed to determine the optimal recovery sequence for failed pipes and the implementation targets for preventive strategies. The process is dynamic, with WDNs undergoing hydraulic redistribution each time a failed pipe is repaired. The resilience importance of the unrepaired failed pipes is recalculated, ensuring that the resilience of WDNs reaches an optimal state. It can further enrich the research in quantitative assessment and optimization of the resilience of WDNs.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hongyan Dui: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Methodology, Investigation. Taiyu Cao: Writing - original draft, Methodology. Fan Wang: Writing - review & editing, Supervision.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this research from the Program for the Program for young backbone teachers in Universities of Henan Province (No. 2021GGJS007).

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