An ASP approach for the optimal placement of the isolation valves in a water distribution system

Several design issues of Water Distribution Systems can be represented as combinatorial optimization problems, and then addressed by means of opportune techniques and technologies available in Computational Logic and Operational Research. My Ph.D. Thesis relates to achieve (near-)optimal solutions to such real-life problems either by exploiting potentialities of existing techniques and by developing ad hoc algorithms. Among all the design issues above mentioned, the Isolation Valve Location Problem is defined as the problem of computing the optimal placement, on the hydraulic network, of a limited number of isolation valves, so that any pipe can be isolable in case of failure and the maximum service disruption (varying the broken pipe) is minimized. About Computational Logic, different Answer Set Programming encodings to such a problem have been developed during the first stage of my research activity, and more suitable encodings are currently under study.