Optimizing Sensor Placement for Flow Reconstruction in Urban Drainage Networks: A Digital Twin-Based Sparse Sensing Approach

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ding, Zihang, Kumar, Amit, Islam, Imran Md. Azizul, Montezuma, Mila Avellar, Zhang, Ruihang, Zhang, Kun
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866916040013774848
author Ding, Zihang
Kumar, Amit
Islam, Imran Md. Azizul
Montezuma, Mila Avellar
Zhang, Ruihang
Zhang, Kun
author_facet Ding, Zihang
Kumar, Amit
Islam, Imran Md. Azizul
Montezuma, Mila Avellar
Zhang, Ruihang
Zhang, Kun
contents Urban flooding triggered by intense rainfall is becoming increasingly frequent and widespread. While flood prediction and monitoring in high spatio-temporal resolution are desired, practical constraints in time, budget, and technology hinder its full implementation. How to monitor urban drainage networks and predict flow conditions under constrained resources is a major challenge. To address this, we introduced a data-driven sparse sensing (DSS) approach, demonstrated via a digital-twin of the Woodland catchment in Duluth, Minnesota. Specifically, we coupled EPA-SWMM with singular value decomposition and QR factorization-based sensor selection to optimize monitoring locations for system-level flow reconstruction. An ensemble of SWMM simulations, driven by diverse scenarios, provided the necessary hydraulic data to extract the reduced basis and identify informative sensor locations. Cross-event validation showed that three strategically placed sensors among 77 candidate nodes achieved a mean system-level Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.949 across observed storm events. The QR-selected sensor sets were benchmarked against reference sensor configurations obtained from exhaustive searches and Monte Carlo random-placements. This comparison further showed that flow reconstruction based on QR-selected sensors closely tracked the exhaustive optimum while substantially outperforming random placements. We further evaluated the framework's robustness by introducing multiplicative Gaussian noise and simulating individual sensor failures. While the model is relatively resilient to noise, the impact of sensor dropouts depends heavily on the number of sensors allocated and their specific locations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_04556
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimizing Sensor Placement for Flow Reconstruction in Urban Drainage Networks: A Digital Twin-Based Sparse Sensing Approach
Ding, Zihang
Kumar, Amit
Islam, Imran Md. Azizul
Montezuma, Mila Avellar
Zhang, Ruihang
Zhang, Kun
Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Urban flooding triggered by intense rainfall is becoming increasingly frequent and widespread. While flood prediction and monitoring in high spatio-temporal resolution are desired, practical constraints in time, budget, and technology hinder its full implementation. How to monitor urban drainage networks and predict flow conditions under constrained resources is a major challenge. To address this, we introduced a data-driven sparse sensing (DSS) approach, demonstrated via a digital-twin of the Woodland catchment in Duluth, Minnesota. Specifically, we coupled EPA-SWMM with singular value decomposition and QR factorization-based sensor selection to optimize monitoring locations for system-level flow reconstruction. An ensemble of SWMM simulations, driven by diverse scenarios, provided the necessary hydraulic data to extract the reduced basis and identify informative sensor locations. Cross-event validation showed that three strategically placed sensors among 77 candidate nodes achieved a mean system-level Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 0.949 across observed storm events. The QR-selected sensor sets were benchmarked against reference sensor configurations obtained from exhaustive searches and Monte Carlo random-placements. This comparison further showed that flow reconstruction based on QR-selected sensors closely tracked the exhaustive optimum while substantially outperforming random placements. We further evaluated the framework's robustness by introducing multiplicative Gaussian noise and simulating individual sensor failures. While the model is relatively resilient to noise, the impact of sensor dropouts depends heavily on the number of sensors allocated and their specific locations.
title Optimizing Sensor Placement for Flow Reconstruction in Urban Drainage Networks: A Digital Twin-Based Sparse Sensing Approach
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.04556