Network Investment for Resilience: Modeling the Water Supply Network of Mexico City

Abstract:

Urban water management under uncertainty is a major challenge due to both the uncertainty in supply and demand, as well as the various scales within a city where investments can take place. To assist with decision support for these problems, models of external supply sources as well as the existing water system within an urban area must be combined within a simulation framework so their joint performance can be examined and optimized. However, at the scope of an entire urban network, there is a lack of platforms which can be used for Integrated Urban Water Management; this means optimizing multiple types of options across the urban water cycle (e.g. groundwater, storm water, distributions system) as well as the ability to do this with short run times. This work presents SimCDMX, a conservation of volume model of the water supply system of Mexico City. The model is formulated as a directed graph which represents functioning of the primary infrastructure of the supply system (lines, tanks, lifting stations), the connected main demand areas, and the external and internal sources which enter the network at various points. This provides the ability to do daily simulations over a 50-year horizon in about 3 seconds, and the benefits of this ability are shown via an optimization of investments and new operations across the system.