Water Demand Maximization: Quick Recovery of Nonlinear Physics Solutions

Abstract

Determining the maximum demand a water distribution network can satisfy is crucial for ensuring reliable supply and planning network expansion. This problem, typically formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP), is computationally challenging. A common strategy to address this challenge is to solve mixed-integer linear program (MILP) relaxations derived by partitioning variable domains and constructing linear over- and under-estimators to nonlinear constraints over each partition. While MILP relaxations are easier to solve up to a modest level of partitioning, their solutions often violate nonlinear water flow physics. Thus, recovering feasible MINLP solutions from the MILP relaxations is crucial for enhancing MILP-based approaches. In this paper, we propose a robust solution recovery method that efficiently computes feasible MINLP solutions from MILP relaxations, regardless of partition granularity. Combined with iterative partition refinement, our method generates a sequence of feasible solutions that progressively approach the optimum. Through extensive numerical experiments, we demonstrate that our method outperforms baseline methods and direct MINLP solves by consistently recovering high-quality feasible solutions with significantly reduced computation times.