In this paper, the application of decentralised model predictive control (DMPC) over a partitioned model of the Barcelona drinking water network (DWN) is proposed. The system decomposition is based on graph partitioning theory, which considers the graph representation of the DWN topology. Once obtained, this system decomposition yields to some bidirectional flows of information between the MPC controllers. Hence, the proposed DMPC strategy copes with this feature, resulting in a hierarchical-like scheme. Results obtained when used selected simulation scenarios show the effectiveness of the control strategy in terms of system modularity, reduced computational burden and, at the same time, the admissible loss of performance in contrast to a centralised MPC (CMPC) strategy.

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