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Delivering water in sufficient quantity and acceptable quality is the main objective of water distribution networks (WDN) and at the same time is the main challenge. Many factors affect the delivery of water through distribution networks. Some of these factors are relevant to water quality, quantity and the condition of the infrastructure itself. The deterioration of water quality in the WDN leads to failure at the water quality level, which can be critical because it is closest to the point of delivery and there are virtually no safety barriers before consumption. Accordingly, developing a powerful monitoring system that takes into consideration water demand distribution, the vulnerability of the distribution system and the sensitivity of the population to the deterioration of water quality can be very beneficial and, more importantly, could save lives if there was any deterioration of water quality due to operational failure or cross-contamination events. In this paper, a framework for a water quality monitoring system that considers water demand distribution, the vulnerability of the system and the sensitivity of the population using fuzzy synthetic evaluation and optimization algorithms is developed. The proposed approach has been applied to develop a monitoring system for a real WDN in Saudi Arabia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]