Leak detection and localization in water distribution networks using conditional deep convolutional generative adversarial networks

This paper explores the use of ‘conditional convolutional generative adversarial networks’ (CDCGAN) for image-based leak detection and localization (LD&L) in water distribution networks (WDNs). The method employs pressure measurements and is based on four pillars: (1) hydraulic model-based generation of leak-free training data by taking into account the demand uncertainty, (2) conversion of hydraulic model input demand-output pressure pairs into images using kriging interpolation, (3) training of a CDCGAN model for image-to-image translation, and (4) using the structural similarity (SSIM) index for LD&L. SSIM, computed over the entire pressure distribution image is used for leak detection, and a local estimate of SSIM is employed for leak localization. The CDCGAN model employed in this paper is based on the pix2pix architecture. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is demonstrated on leakage datasets under various scenarios. Results show that the method has an accuracy of approximately 70% for real-time leak detection. The proposed method is well-suited for real-time applications due to the low computational cost of CDCGAN predictions compared to WDN hydraulic models, is robust in presence of uncertainty due to the nature of generative adversarial networks, and scales well to large and variable-sized monitoring data due to the use of an image-based approach.