Routing Field Channels through a Tertiary Unit with Heterogeneous Fields
Publication: Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 9
Abstract
The extensive irrigation systems of South Asia are predominately a hierarchy of canals delivering water to a tertiary unit. A network of field channels transfers water within the tertiary unit to the field where it is applied using surface irrigation. The network of field channels within a tertiary unit is often left to the farmers/farmer associations to construct, maintain, and operate. This paper develops a mathematical model/algorithm for routing the field channel along the existing field boundaries such that every field is serviced by a field channel and minimizing the total length of the field channel as a proxy measure of the cost of construction of field channels. The models developed in this paper are formulated as integer programs, implemented in a general-purpose solver. The model is applied to a tertiary unit of the Gomal Zam Irrigation System in Pakistan and shows that for this particular application, the optimized total length of field channels is 9,463 m compared with 11,313 m when an expert judgment is used, a reduction of 1,850 m (20%).
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) is in receipt of financial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Cooperative Agreement No. 72039118 IO 00003, which was used in part to support this study. The study design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the results are exclusively those of the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of USAID or IWMI.
The authors acknowledge the contribution of Mark Wiley of LINDO Systems for providing the authors with an example of the Steiner Tree problem. The authors acknowledge the contribution of Muhammad Humza, Consultant GIS/Database Developer, who prepared all the shape and data files used in this paper.
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Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 9 • September 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 12, 2020
Accepted: Mar 12, 2021
Published online: Jul 13, 2021
Published in print: Sep 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Dec 13, 2021
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