Fostering climate resilient and smart water management in agriculture

The present project is aimed at providing smart and simple, accessible ICT-based solutions for combating water management-related challenges in sustainable agriculture. The multi-source data and forecasted precipitation estimate daily soil moisture for the next 10 days. The forecasted soil moisture will be a key parameter in operating the automated control drainage system. This helps in implementing optimal irrigation or drainage management. This automated controlled drainage system can support maintaining the soil moisture in the root zone by closing the valve if the forecasted soil moisture is in deficit. On the contrary, during higher rainfall events the drainage valves will automatically be opened to initiate drainage to avoid waterlogging. A drainage-irrigation systems model will be developed based on the generated data for automation of the control concept of drainage performance while considering the possibility of using available drainage systems for irrigation. The model simulates a soil profile with subsurface drainages which are equipped with two automated valves (input and output) and an elevated tank. The model estimates daily (or other temporal resolution) of soil moisture for the next 10 days based on predicted rainfall and crop demand (as a function of predicted evapotranspiration). The output valve will control the outflow and will be open when the extra soil moisture is predicted (in case of forecasting high rainfall for the next 10 days), otherwise will be close to control the soil moisture in optimum point for the crop.