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About the project

This site contains the documentation of the development of a real-time control robot to improve the control of water distribution networks. The real-time control robot (henceforth the RTC robot) has been developed as a part of work package 4 in the CHAIN project, primarily by DHI, Alexandra Instituttet and Aarhus Vand.

Vision

The vision is to make the RTC robot a system-wide controller for water distribution networks, which based on data from the operational system proactively coordinates the set-points of the controllable devices. Previous demand patterns are used as input to prediction of the demand for the coming days. The water production and the exchange between different pressure zones are coordinated based on the predicted demands while upholding the supply reliability.

Development philosophy

The purpose of the project is twofold

  • Develop the model concepts and implement them in software - the RTC robot
  • Demonstrate the RTC robot in real-time operation

Our experiences from projects with similar goals have taught us that often the development stalls in "the hunt for the perfect configuration of the perfect model". The pitfall has been that the model development ends up in more or less hard-coded proof-of-concept implementations, where the models' capabilities are investigated for a specific site on a theoretical level, but the importance of demonstration in a real-time environment is toned down.

For the RTC robot, we chose to shift the focus to the "demonstration in real-time operation" part. So, ability to execute the models in a workflow, which is realistic for real-time operation is prioritised over investigating model performance. The other high priority has been to implement the models in software, which is general and configurable, so that configuration of another site (or just another layout of the same site, for that matter) is decoupled from the software implementation. So in other words our development philosophy is formulated as:

  • High priority to general implementation of configurable models and on organising the workflow for real-time execution
  • Less focus on investigating and justifying the exact configuration choices for the models

About the CHAIN project

The CHAIN project is funded by Innovation Fund Denmark under contract no. 7076-00043B, and ran during the period January 1st 2018 to June 30th 2021.

Partners in the project are