Evaluation of hydraulic behavior of water distribution network varying reservoirs levels, roughness, and diameters with the use of R and EPANET

Abstract

Disorderly use of water resources has led to depletion, causing environmental and social issues. A relevant aspect to be observed in water supply systems is physical losses which occur during the system’s entire operational process. Many different software packages allow simulations of pressures and flow in water networks. The most used is EPANET. The epanet2toolkit is a recently developed R package that performs the interaction between EPANET and R. Based on this tool, a set of functions is developed to study and evaluate a theoretical network. The objective is to find an ideal network configuration (design) mainly for pressure management which simultaneously reduces physical losses. Water network parameters, such as roughness, reservoir levels, and diameters are used as parameters. A Monte Carlo simulation is generated, based on random values of these network parameters. From these, an ideal pressure scenario is found, resulting in a reduction of 11.6% in the occurrence of physical losses concerning the base case.