  This book addresses the scientific domains of operations research,
information science and statistics with a focus on engineering applications.
The purpose of this book is to report on the implications of the loop equations
formulation of the state estimation procedure of the network systems, for the
purpose of the implementation of Decision Support (DS) systems for the
operational control of the network systems. In general an operational DS
comprises a series of standalone applications from which the mathematical
modeling and simulation of the distribution systems and the managing of the
uncertainty in the decision-making process are essential in order to obtain
efficient control and monitoring of the distribution systems. The mathematical
modeling and simulation forms the basis for detailed optimization of the
network operations and the second one uses uncertainty based reasoning in order
to reduce the complexity of the network system and to increase the credibility
of its model. This book reports on the integration of the two aspects of
operational DS into a single computational framework of loop network equations.
The proposed DS system will be validated using case studies taken from the
water industry. The optimal control of water distribution systems is an
important problem because the models are non-linear and large-scale and
measurements are prone to errors and very often they are incomplete.
