Notice of RetractionInvestigation on backward tracking of contamination sources in water supply systems---case study

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

To minimize the effects of potable water accidental contamination, efficient determination of contamination sources plays a critical role. In this paper, authors apply simulation-optimization method to backward tracking contamination sources in laboratory water supply system. By introducing sodium hypochlorite solution (a substitute for contaminants) from candidate intrusion points into the system, authors collected 30 sets of monitoring data, which are data source of the estimation. Via comparison of running results with different input parameters, such as water network topologic structure and simulation time horizon, authors discuss influencing factors of this algorithm and analyze their effects. If the proposed factors were expressed appropriately, this method successfully identified contamination sources with 93.3% accuracy. Findings in this study will guide us to the application of the simulation-optimization algorithm for identifying the contamination sources in municipal water distribution systems.