Towards Optimal Event Detection and Localization in Acyclic Flow Networks

Acyclic flow networks, present in many infrastructures of national importance (e.g., oil & gas and water distribution systems), have been attracting immense research interest. Existing solutions for detecting and locating attacks against these infrastructures, have been proven costly and imprecise, especially when dealing with large scale distribution systems. In this paper, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, we investigate how mobile sensor networks can be used for optimal event detection and localization in acyclic flow networks. Sensor nodes move along the edges of the network and detect events (i.e., attacks) and proximity to beacon nodes with known placement in the network. We formulate the problem of minimizing the cost of monitoring infrastructure (i.e., minimizing the number of sensor and beacon nodes deployed), while ensuring a degree of sensing coverage in a zone of interest and a required accuracy in locating events. We propose algorithms for solving these problems and demonstrate their effectiveness with results obtained from a high fidelity simulator.