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eISSN: 2083-5906
ISSN: 1230-1485
ISSN: 1230-1485
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Multi-USVs Collaborative Water Pollution
Traceability and Source Localization Using
an Improved Wolf Pack Algorithm
1
Ecological and Environmental Monitoring Center of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou 310012, China
2
Department of Environmental Engineering, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou 310018, China
Submission date: 2025-12-10
Final revision date: 2026-03-15
Acceptance date: 2026-03-31
Online publication date: 2026-09-07
Corresponding author
Tao Ding
Department of Environmental Engineering, China Jiliang University, No. 258, Xueyuan Street, 310018, Hangzhou, China
Department of Environmental Engineering, China Jiliang University, No. 258, Xueyuan Street, 310018, Hangzhou, China
KEYWORDS
water pollution traceabilityimproved wolf pack algorithmmulti unmanned surface vesselssimulation experiment
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
With the increasing frequency of water pollution incidents due to urbanization and industrialization,
this paper proposes an Improved Wolf Pack Algorithm (IWPA) for coordinating multiple Unmanned
Surface Vessels (USVs) to achieve rapid river pollution traceability. The IWPA incorporates
a dynamic step adjustment mechanism and a dynamic population adjustment strategy to overcome
the limitations of the fixed step factor and random repositioning in the standard Wolf Pack Algorithm
(WPA). These enhancements prevent the algorithm from converging on local optima and improve the
overall traceability efficiency of the multi-USV formation. Simulation results demonstrate the superior
performance of IWPA. Under conditions of a 1500 g/s source emission rate, a 3 m/s longitudinal flow
velocity, and using only 5 USVs, IWPA achieves a success rate of 97.3% and an average localization
error of 0.41 m. These results represent improvements of 15.9% in success rate and 71.3% in error
reduction compared to the standard WPA. Laboratory-based water pollution traceability tests further
confirm the method’s effectiveness, with a success rate of 80%, validating its practical localization
capability.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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| eISSN: | 2083-5906 |
| ISSN: | 1230-1485 |
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