Abstract
Concerns related to protecting, identifying, and isolating of subsystems of a water distribution network have led to the realization of the increased importance of valves in the system. The most important purpose of valves in water distribution systems is to isolate a subsystem due to breakage, maintenance activities, or contamination. A subsystem called segment is isolated by the closure of adjacent valves. Minimizing the pipe failure impact, an efficient algorithm is required to identify adjacent valves quickly. In this paper, an algorithm to identify adjacent valves to be closed to isolate a subsystem from the remainder of a network when a pipe failure is presented. The algorithm is operated on a matrix called the valve location matrix containing the information of valve locations. An application to an existing water distribution system demonstrates the developed algorithm efficiently locates the adjacent valves for the isolation of a broken pipe.