Looped water distribution networks design using a resilience index based heuristic approach

A technique, based upon the original definition of a “resilience” index to account for the fact that water distribution networks are designed as “looped systems” in order to increase the hydraulic reliability and the availability of water during pipe failures, is introduced. The problem is formulated as a vector optimisation problem with two objective functions: cost and resilience. The solution of the vector optimisation problem, in the space spanned by the objective functions is the non-dominated or Pareto set, the edge of which is rapidly approximated by the proposed heuristic technique even in the case of large real world networks.