WDN-tailored Complex Network Centrality Metrics for water distribution networks domain analysis

Abstract

Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) are spatially organized infrastructures, whose hydraulic behavior greatly depends on their connectivity properties, i.e., the topological domain. The Complex Network Theory (CNT) provides a wide range of useful functions and metrics that have been tailored for identifying WDNs behavior, even before using hydraulic models. This work exploits the recent studies on the WDN domain, which couple the CNT metrics of centrality tailored for WDN with the intrinsic relevance of the spatial elements of the networks. The study accounts for various combinations of metrics and intrinsic relevance functions aimed at supporting WDN analysis for operational and management tasks. A Digital Water Service (DWS) is used to enable technicians and water companies to replicate the same domain analysis in the ongoing context of digital transformation in WDN sector.