CAREER: Predictive Estimation for Managing Water Distribution Systems and Applications of Distributed Sensing Technologies

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This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will support decision-making processes by water system managers to advance and promote intelligent and resilient water systems. Water distribution systems are critical components of our urban environments providing safe drinking water to our homes and businesses. This research will develop computational methods and tools for using data collected by new sensing devices placed throughout a water system’s distribution network. These tools will better estimate current system’s operation given current demands and necessary modifications given changing demands and uncertain hazards. The primary impact of this research is to bridge knowledge gaps toward intelligent water systems through dissemination of new scientific tools, training future engineers, and integrating research into education. This scientific research contributes to NSF’s mission to promote the progress of science, to advance national welfare, and to secure public water provisions.This project has a research and education plan that focuses on creating new models for predictive state estimation under limited observability through parameter identification, uncertainty quantification, and model reduction for large-scale intelligent water systems. Research activities include: (1) creating new state estimation models that seamlessly integrate heterogeneous measurements from distributed sensing devices; (2) generating flexible alternatives for reducing the dimensionality of the state estimation and uncertainty propagation problems by reducing the hydraulic models through structured elimination of nodes, demand aggregation, and identification of influential parameters; (3) creating new sensor placement strategies for best selection and location of heterogeneous metering instruments providing maximal information gain; and (4) estimating prediction bounds and quantifying prediction sensitivity to measurement, demand, and topology uncertainties. Outreach activities include stakeholders’ workshop that will engage water utilities and local agencies, tech and consulting companies to identify and present practical solutions for technology adoption; open-source toolkit and repository for reproducibility and dissemination of research outcomes and technical workshop for training future engineers in advanced modeling tools and increasing minority participation; battle of algorithms for sensor networks for state estimation as a mechanism to challenge and train researchers, create and share new scientific tools; water competition to get young people excited about engineering through fun, hands-on activity; and revamping engineering curriculum to adapt to the advances in sensing and computational technologies and integrate research into education.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.