Sensor Placement for Contamination Detection in Urban Water Distribution System Based on Multidimensional Resilience

Urban water distribution systems (WDSs) face increasing threats from accidental or intentional contaminant intrusion events. While contamination warning systems using water quality sensors enable early detection and rapid response to contamination events, traditional sensor placement approaches often rely on a single or limited performance metric, overlooking the multidimensional nature of system resilience. This study presents a multidimensional resilience-based framework for the optimal placement of water quality sensors in urban WDSs, integrating hydraulic and water quality simulations using the EPANET-MATLAB toolkit with a genetic algorithm (GA) optimization process. For Anytown Water Distribution Network, four distinct functionalities were formulated to capture different aspects of system performance during contamination events, and an integrated-multidimensional resilience metric was proposed as a collective measure. Results demonstrated that the optimal sensor configurations varied significantly depending on the selected functionality. However, the integrated multidimensional resilience-based approach yielded more balanced and effective sensor placements, simultaneously enhancing resilience levels for all individual functionalities. Furthermore, the findings indicated that adding more sensors beyond a certain number offers marginal improvements in system resilience, suggesting that sensor deployment should be guided by monitoring objectives (e.g., resilience) rather than simply increasing sensor numbers. The findings and discussion suggest practical insights for utilities to enhance water supply services with safe quality and system security against contamination threats in urban WDSs.