Patent Document ID: 10060835
Application ID: 14808814
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of optimizing selection of hydrants for flow test in a water distribution system, comprising: building an impact database that is stored on a non-transitory electronic device readable medium, the impact database to indicate whether a flow test at each hydrant in the water distribution system has an impact on each pipe of the water distribution system; receiving, by a hydrant selection solver application executing on the electronic device, a user-supplied number of hydrants to be subject to flow test; searching, by the hydrant selection solver application for an optimized set of hydrants for flow test that include the user-supplied number, the searching to include: generating a candidate set of hydrants for flow test, calculating a fitness value for the candidate set of hydrants for flow test using the impact database, the fitness value to evaluate performance of the candidate set of hydrants for flow test based on flow velocity or hydraulic gradient change in pipes, evolving the candidate set of hydrants based on the fitness value to produce a subsequent candidate set of hydrants for flow test, and iteratively repeating the calculating and evolving until a stopping criteria is reached to produce an optimized set of hydrants for flow test that maximizes the fitness value; displaying, by the hydrant selection solver application on a display screen on the electronic device, indications of the optimized set of hydrants; and conducting a flow test at each of the hydrants of the water distribution system indicated in the optimized set of hydrants from the hydrant selection solver application.