Robust Planning of Irrigation Considering Water Consumption and Revenue

Abstract

Water scarcity is a problem for many regions which requires immediate action and solutions cannot be postponed for a long time. It is known that farming consumes a significant portion of usable water. In this study, a decision support model of bi-objective stochastic linear formulation is proposed. The model is generating annual planting plans together with water consumption projections for each farmer in the region while taking revenue of the overall harvest into account. The structure of the proposed model maintains robustness against the volatilities in precipitation, yield, and market price. The inherent trade-off between water consumption and revenue lends itself to multi-objective planning. This is a perspective especially useful for regional administrations to plan next year's crop pattern together with agricultural incomes and irrigation expenses. Furthermore, it is also shown that how the model can be used to investigate the potential of rainwater harvesting or switching to water-efficient irrigation methodologies. The decision support model is especially unique in the sense that it can generate a set of Pareto optimum solutions as opposed to a single objective counterpart. This property is helpful in terms of not only providing a broader perspective to evaluate and project the possibilities but also increasing the applicability of the results by providing flexible design framework.