2008 International Conference on Intelligent Computation Technology and Automation

Region Water Supply System Optimization Based on Binary and Continuous Ant Colony Algorithms
ZHANG Qin, WANG Xiong-hai Dept. of Electrical engineering, Zhejiang Univ., Hangzhou 310027, China E-mail: qiner_618@hotmail.com Abstract
This paper develops a flow model to minimize energy costs in regional water supply system (RWSS), by using water distribution as decision variable, desired water quality and tank water level as constraint functions, and the highly nonlinear optimization model is solved by ant colony optimization algorithm (ACOA). Two ant colony optimization algorithms with different codes are presented to modify ACOA, binary (BACO) and continuous (CACO) ant colony optimization, the former adopts disturbance factor and the latter uses adaptive search steps to avoid premature convergence, combined with dynamic evaporation factor for both of them to find the best solution. The differences of performance between them are compared in RWSS case study, and experimental result shows that CACO is effective as it outperforms BACO. to explore search space and improve convergence speed. The objective of this paper is to assess the efficacy of BACO and CACO for RWSS, and a performance comparison in the RWSS case study is presented to undertake this assessment.

2. Region water supply system

2.1 Model description
For multi-source RWSS, optimization policy is built to satisfy nodal demand for pressure and discharge with the lowest total operating costs under a given set of boundary and system constraints to satisfy. Mathematically, the objective function can be expressed in the following way:

MIN E = T C
t =1 nN

wQO Hn,t
n ,t

Gn,t

(1)

1. Introduction
With increasing urbanization and consumer demand, regional water supply system (RWSS) is becoming a high-cost network associated with pumps and tanks[7]. Within the last decade, many researchers have shifted the focus of RWSS optimization from traditional optimization techniques based on linear and nonlinear programming[1~2] to the meta-heuristics[3~4] derived from nature. Ant colony optimization algorithm (ACOA), as a meta-heuristic algorithm, has been widely and successfully applied to many different optimization problems, and the latest study shows that ACOA is a competitive candidate for RWSS optimization[5~6]. To improve the performance of ACOA, two algorithms with different codes are presented as binary (BACO) and continuous (CACO) ant colony optimization. Among them the advancements of ACOA decision policy include disturbance factor, evaporation factor and search steps

Subject to

H min n H n ,t H max n Q QOn ,t QOmax n Omin n H n ,t = H yn ,t Q = Qyn ,t s.t. On ,t (2) H min y H y ,t H max y Qmin y Qy ,t Qmax y H R min H Rt H R max H RT = H R0 where E is total energy cost to be minimized; T is the
number of time intervals which constitute the operating horizon; w is water specific gravity; C is electric rate of pump station; QOn ,t , H n ,t and Gn ,t are discharge, pressure head and efficiency of pump station n during time period t ; QOmin n and QOmax n , H min n and H max n are minimum and maximum allowable flow and pressure for

978-0-7695-3357-5/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICICTA.2008.125

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pump station n ; H yn ,t and Qyn ,t are the head and flow at station n to satisfy demand node; H y ,t is demand node pressure, H min y and H max y are minimum and maximum allowable pressure head at demand node; Qy ,t is demand node flow, Qmin y and Qmax y are minimum and maximum allowable discharge at demand node; H Rt is tank water level, the maximum allowable water level H R max is normally the top of the tank, and H R min is above the tank bottom in order to provide some residual storage for additional demand pressure, H R 0 is the initial level and H RT is the final level after time T .

H l is the pipe loss and H nm is the pressure which demand node m needs from supply node n . Qc is taken to be proportional to the demand nodal
discharge. That is

Qc = T ( QOn,t (q) Qyn,t / Qyn,t )

t =1 n

Converting the constraint of water supply capability of each pump station to objective:
QO QO n ,t min n if QOn ,t < QOmin n QOmax n QOmin n Qs ,t = 0 if QOmin n QOn ,t QOmax n Q Q Omax n On ,t if QOn ,t > QOmax n Q Q O Omin n max n

2.2 Model optimization

In this study, qij flowing from node i to node j is the decision variable. In matrix qt ( p p ) , p represents the number of nodes, qo ,t is the flow row matrix and qI ,t is the column matrix. In the junction node k , the discharge flowing in must be vent equally, namely

Qs = T Qs,t
t =1

The proportional to the demand nodal discharge Qy has the same form as Qs , and in practice only the flow constraints need to be considered, as a hydraulic restriction is clearly automatically satisfied corresponding to the flows. The tank water level constraints in booster pump station can be transformed as:

q
i =1

ik ,t

= qkj ,t . C ( p p ) is the set of pipes capacities,

j =1

H Rt = H R ( t 1) + (QR I ,t (q) QRO ,t (q)) / S T HRy = HRT (q) HR0 / HR0

Where S is the tank area, QR I ,t and QRO ,t are the water volumes flowing into and out from the tank respectively. The H Rt within the limits can be rewritten as H R s the same form as Qs . The unconstrained optimization problem of RWSS takes the form of minimizing the product of the real cost and the penalty cost, that is M INZ=E(1+H +Q +Q +Q +H +H (5) c)(1 c)(1 s)(1 y)(1 Rs)(1 Ry) where Z is the network cost , E is the system energy and the rest are the penalties incurred by qij ,t . The multi-objective function (5) ensures that all networks with pressure or flow violation are more expensive than the maximum feasible network.

and 0 qij ,t min(cij , QOmax ) . QO = [QO1 ,", QOn ,", QON ]T is the set of flows the supply node providing into demand node. QI = [QI1 ,", QIm ,", QIM ]T is the set of flows into the demand node. A( p p ) denotes the flows direction matrix, aij = 1 means flow discharging from node i into j , but when aij = 0 there is no water between nodes. Rearranging

A = [ A1 A2 ]T

and

A = [ A3 A4 ] ,

A1 = [ A11( p1) A12 " A1N ]( p N ) is set

of N supply nodes and A4 = [ A41( p1) A42 " A4 M ]( p M ) is the matrix of M demand nodes. Combining the pipe flow, there are the following formulae: qon ,t A1n = QOn ,t (q ) (n = 1, 2," , N ) (3)
T A4 m qIm,t = QI m ,t (q) (m = ( p + 1- M ),", p)

(4)

Then formulae (1) and (2) can be optimized by using formulae (3) and (4). H c is taken to be proportional to demand nodal pressure. That is

3. Ant colony optimization algorithm

Like most meta-heuristic, the ACOA incrementally search through the solution space using knowledge gained from previous solutions to further guide the search. This is based on an analogy with trails of pheromone laid on the paths which real ants use for

Hc = T ( H (q) Hyn,t / Hyn,t )

t =1 n=1

H (q) = H l + H nm

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communication. The pheromone trails are a kind of distributed information modified by ants to reflect their experience accumulated during the problem solving. So different pheromone modification, roads transfer methods and coding can improve optimization effect.

Where us denotes the increment of pheromones from node u to u + 1 ; Z ib is the best value of model objective in this iteration; D is positive constant; g is generation and G is the total iterations. is defined as persistence of pheromone, to turn to good value sensitively, the more the iteration, the dynamic is smaller.

3.1 Binary ant colony optimization

BACO is specially designed for the problems with binary solution representation. As mentioned above, qt ( p p ) is taken as decision variable so the BACO must code this variable into a binary stringEach continuous variable qij ,t is represented by a binary substring of r bits x = { x1 ," , xr } {0,1} .
r

3.2 Continuous ant colony optimization

In CACO, there are W colonies and V ants in each colony, initially ants spread in the search space [0, min(cij , QOmax )] randomly. Each ant can
wv deposit a certain amount of pheromone ij on the

The maximum and minimum flows should be considered in the value scope [0, min(cij , QOmax )] . Therefore, the coding discrete precisions are expressed as B = (min(cij , QOmax ) 0) /(2r 1) . In BACO, a number of na ants cooperate together to search in the binary solution domain. During every iteration, each ant constructs its solution by walking sequentially from node 1 to node v on the routing graph. At each node u , each ant has two choices u 0 or u1 to walk to the next node u + 1 . u0 means xu = 0 ; and Selecting selecting u1 means xu = 1 . The pheromone u 0 and

search space, proportionally to the objective function value Z sv . The pheromone update rule is the same as wv , which is the formula (7), but us is replaced by ij
wv flow qij attraction of ant v in colony w .The pheromone

can be perceived by all the members of the population, and diffuse into the environment. The ants are moving towards the high pheromone with small distance according to the following:
( w ' v ) ( ww ' ) ij ij ( w ' v ) ( ww ' ) ww ' ( g ) = Pij ij ij 0

w ' v > wv ij ij w ' v < wv ij ij

(8)

u1 cumulated on the paths determine the values of

selecting probabilities: us ( g ) u = 1," , r s {0,1} pus ( g ) = u 0 ( g ) + u1 ( g ) Then the bigger pus is more likely to be selected. To avoid premature resulting from ants gathering in the same paths, disturbance is introduced to the selecting probabilities: us ( g ) s ( g ) (6) pus ( g ) = u0 ( g ) 0 ( g ) + u1 ( g ) 1 ( g ) More iterations corresponds to smaller weight factor , at the beginning ants shall explore more space and find out more solutions, and finally the effect of disturbance is becoming smaller and smaller, so the algorithm can converge to the optimal solution. According to above, an ant moves along one of the two roads to the next node, and each pheromone on the roads is adjusted as follows:
us ( g ) = us ( g 1) + us ( g ) ib us ( g ) = D / Z ( g ) = e ( g +1) / G

wv Here, ij is the amount of pheromone laid on the spot ww ' and ij is the inverse of flow distance between
ww ' wv w'v colony w and colony w ' , namely ij = 1/ (qij qij ).

The attraction ability of each spot is determined by its distance and the amount of pheromone it contains. It is worth to notice that at this point each ant does not go directly to the most attractive and nearest spot. Indeed, each artificial ant has a range parameter that is normally distributed over the population. Each artificial ant draws a random distance, under the limit of range parameter, and then jumps of this length in the most attractive direction: q ( g 1) + ( 1) r Rand qq (9)
wv Rand

qijwv ( g ) = qijwv ( g 1) + sign(d ijww ' ) r2 d ijww ' > r2 q < q0 w'v q ( g 1) otherwise ij

ij

Here r1 is the maximum value to find feasible good neighbors, and r2 is the maximum distance to explore search space towards the excellent objective function.

(7)

4. Case study

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Fig 1. Framework diagram of RWSS Experiments are performed in the case study composed of two sources, three demands, one tank and eleven pipes shown in Fig.1. The maximum hourly node demand of the pipe network and the same demand pattern factor of all junctions in 24 hours are shown in Table1. With allowance for depositing water for high building extra pressure, the cylindrical water tank area is1153.85m2, and target elevation is 28m, allowable pressure head at demand node 1 and 2 is between 24 and 50 m, and the demand node 3 has the high pressure as H y 3 = 80m . Table 1. the maximum hourly node demand of pipe network and demand factor
Demand Demand Demand Water Time Time factor (%) factor (%) node demand(L/s) 1 43.80 1 3.01 13 3.65 2 98.80 2 3.01 14 3.58 3 246.60 3 3.00 15 3.62 4 3.01 16 3.55 5 3.02 17 3.53 6 3.15 18 3.62 7 3.70 19 3.67 8 3.60 20 3.62 9 3.67 21 3.47 10 3.65 22 3.42 11 3.68 23 3.16 12 3.68 24 3.00

Fig 2. RWSS optimization graph of BACO and CACO With BACO given in dashed line and CACO in beeline, it is not difficult to see that after 150 generations improvement, BACO reaches a point where it is unable to find solutions of increasing quality and with an increasing number of iterations the spread of the solution costs converges to a much tighter interval. Contrasting this performance to CACO, it is observed that after a slightly slower rate CACO is able to find optimal solutions. However, CACO doesnt converge to the same extent as BACO, but continues to generate solutions of a broad quality, indicating that the algorithm is still actively exploring the search space even if it locates solutions of extremely high quality. The optimal solutions of BACO and CACO are presented as bellow.

For the algorithms optimization, parameters are set as follows: population size is 50 and the number of generations is set at 350, other same ACOA parameters are = 5 , = 3 , 0 = 35 , max / min = 1.618 , D = 1000 ; given
wv eleven variables each qij represented by a ten-bit

Fig 3. Source Energy optimization graph between BACO and CACO

binary sub-string for BACO, the total string length is 110 bits in every colony and every time; r1 = 0.5 r2 for CACO. To illustrate the different behaviors of BACO and CACO, the network costs for a sample run are given in Fig.2. Taking calculation efficiency into consideration, the experiment analysis took about 10s under the configuration of a Celeron 3.46G CPU and 0.99G RAM.

Fig 4. Booster pump energy optimization graph in tank between BACO and CACO

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Fig 5. Tank level optimization graph between BACO and CACO

distribution in pipes as decision variables. ACOA is introduced for solving this model, and improved methods are proposed as BACO and CACO in several ways. First, disturbance factor is specially designed in BACO, so ants can construct better solutions by the probability of path selection. Second, in order to widen search space, adaptive search steps is adopted in CACO. Last, both of BACO and CACO use dynamic evaporation factor for pheromone updating. The RWSS case study results reveal that, CACO solve the problem more effectively than BACO by searching the solution space more thoroughly

Acknowledge
This research is funded by Zhejiang province Important Special Item Foundation of China under Grant Number 2006C11227.

Reference:
Fig 6. Pressure optimization graph between BACO and CACO in demand node 3 The calculation is conducted over 24 h using discrete time intervals of l h. In the condition of satisfying flow volume demands, the biggest pressure demand and tank level optimized are shown in fig 3fig 6. It is seen that source pump energy of BACO is more than that of CACO in day time but less in night, while booster pump energy in tank is opposite, and tank level changes correspondingly. Between 7.am to 8.pm demand nodes need more water and source pump optimized by BACO supplies more, but the decreasing pressure provided by source in addition to increasing pipes losses results in more pressure differences in the important demand node than that of CACO. In CACO by using high source energy to transport much water cooperating with booster pump during night, tank level is ascending to deposit water which operates in daytime. So the demand pressure can be satisfied greatly and the total energy is less than that of BACO.
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5. Conclusions
In view of the costly regional water supply system, the model of optimal pump energy costs between source-demand is developed by using water

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