Application of the Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm for the Optimization of a General Large-Scale Water Supply System

A water supply system is a complex network of pipes, canals and storage and treatment facilities that collects, treats, stores, and distributes water to consumers. Increasing population and its associated demands requires systems to be expanded and adapted over time to provide a sustainable water supply. Comprehensive design tools are needed to assist managers determine how to plan for future growth. In this study, a general large-scale water supply system model was developed to minimize the total system cost by integrating a mathematical supply system representation and applying an improved shuffled frog leaping algorithm optimization scheme (SFLA). The developed model was applied to two hypothetical water communities. The operational strategies and the capacities for the system components including water transport and treatment facilities are model decision variables. An explicit representation of energy consumption cost for the transporting water in the model assists in determining the efficacy of satellite wastewater treatment facilities. Although the water supply systems studied contained highly nonlinear terms in the formulation as well as several hundred decisions variables, the stochastic search algorithm, SFLA, successfully found solutions that satisfied all the constraints for the studied networks.