Distributed model predictive control for water infrastructures
Abstract:
The robust and reliable operation of water infrastructures (drinking water supply networks, sewer systems, irrigation canals, ...) is essential for the functioning of modern societies. Open water systems like river deltas consist of a large number of interconnected rivers and large water bodies. Control structures, such as large sluices and pumps, are available to control the water levels and flows. Typically national or regional water boards are responsible for the management of the system and they have the following main objectives: protection against overtopping of dikes due to high river flows and high sea tides, providing sufficient supply of water during dry periods, and making sure water levels are high enough to enable navigation. As water infrastructures are operating closer and closer to their capacity limits and as the dynamics of these networks become more and more complex, control of large-scale water systems has to be advanced to a next level using state-of-the-art control techniques. Such control techniques should be able to deal with the large size, distributed nature, and multi-objective character of the control problems encountered, and should be able to anticipate undesired behavior at an early stage. In this presentation we therefore discuss how multi-agent or distributed model predictive control can be used for control of large-scale water infrastructures.