Localisation Task in Sewer Networks

Paper deals with the inverse / localisation task in sewer networks. An inverse problem is defined as the process of determining the causal factors from a set of observations. Applying this principle to the water management sector, it is often a matter of determining the location of the source of pollution based on monitored data on the concentration of pollution over time. From a mathematical point of view, to decrease the uncertainty of the inverse task solution, it is necessary to know the location of the source or the concentrations time course of the source (intensity function). In practice, we usually do not know any of these quantities, however, in the case of sewer networks we can accept some assumptions, which allow us to solve this inverse problem. Paper analyses specific conditions applied in the environment of sewer networks and describes proposed method for solving the source localisation task in the sewer network environment. The solution is based on numerical modelling of the pollution spreading in sewer system, accepting some process simplifications as well as assuming some source parameters. Typically, the solution of inverse task requires large and time consuming numerical simulations. This can be disadvantageous after recording the pollution event - a long calculation time reduces the efficiency and operability for the following pollution source reconnaissance. Therefore, our proposed method performs the necessary simulations in advance and the pollution source localisation after recording the pollution event is very fast, using a simple search and comparison in the simulation results database. The proposed method was tested on real sewer system and there were achieving promising results.