A statistical technique is used to estimate the status of switching devices (such as circuit breakers, isolator switches and fuses) in distribution networks, using scares (i.e., limited or non-redundant) measurements. Using expected values of power consumption, and their variance, the confidence level of identifying the correct topology, or the current status of switching devices, is calculated using any given configuration of real time measurements. Different topologies are then compared in order to select the most likely topology at the prevailing time. The measurements are assumed as normally distributed random variables, and the maximum likelihood principle or a support vector machine is applied.