Economic Model Predictive Control for Water Distribution Networks

Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) play an important role in infrastructure and society and efficient management policies to ensure a reliable and sustainable water supply are critical. This paper presents an Economic Model Predictive Control (EMPC) scheme for a certain class of WDNs with storage facilities and discrete actuation, which are prevalent globally, especially in the global south. The EMPC framework is designed to minimize operating costs and adaptively manage water flow and distribution, considering uncertainties in model parameters and disturbances such as demands and power outages. At each iteration of the EMPC, the mathematical problem of optimal resource allocation is formulated as a computatinoally efficient Mixed Integer Linear Program that is solved using column generation. Simulation results demonstrate the ability of the EMPC approach to adapt to disturbances and uncertainties while minimizing energy.