A three-phase procedure for designing an irrigation system's water distribution network

This paper focuses on the design of an irrigation network included in a public project to build a distributing water system for agricultural purposes. We begin by outlining the issue. We then present a procedure composed of three sequential modules to tackle this complex problem. The first module provides the design of the network links by heuristically constructing a short length Steiner forest. In the second module, the flows for every arc of this network are calculated. The last one determines the size of the pipes and pumps by solving a mixed binary linear programming problem. A real experiment is reported. Although further improvements are required, the results confirm the adaptability of the overall procedure to assist agricultural engineers in preparing their projects.