The detection of the pipeline leakage can be formulated as an inverse problem which is solved by using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method. The sensitivity analysis was conducted with respect to various pipeline parameters (such as Darcy-Weisbach friction factor f and leakage holes flow coefficient C1, etc.). The results of robust corresponding to these parameters were given. A classical pipeline model governed by nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs) was employed to obtain a numerical simulation based on the experimental platform. Then the PSO algorithm was used to search leakage parameters and perturbations were introduced to implement sensitivity analysis. Results demonstrate that the particle swarm algorithm’s robustness towards parameters decreases with the parameter’s sensitivity increases.