COST-EFFECTIVE MONITORING AND CONTROL FOR IRRIGATIONDISTRICTS

摘要

Today irrigation districts across the United States face mounting challenges to maintainviable operations as facilities age, competing demands for water increase, urbanizationspreads, and competition for quality employees is becoming an increasing concern.Issues commonly dealt with by irrigation districts – including weather events, actions oflivestock or wildlife, and unintended impacts of human activity – may be unchanged inlikelihood of occurrence, but may now represent potential for dramatically increasedfinancial impact compared with historical episodes of similar nature.Access to real-time knowledge of conditions at key locations, and the capability toremotely operate or adjust operations of control structures at key points in the irrigationdelivery system can enable an irrigation district to increase delivery efficiency andquality of service, enhance staff productivity, and respond rapidly and effectively tounexpected events. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems thatprovide these capabilities are being integrated into the operation of growing numbers ofirrigation districts.In most situations, availability of external funding has played the pivotal role in thefeasibility for irrigation districts to consider SCADA. Reclamation’s HydraulicInvestigations and Research Laboratory, together with Reclamation’s Nebraska-KansasArea Office, are working to develop monitoring and control systems that could beadopted by districts of any size which can offer affordability within normal operatingbudgets (I.e. Reasonable acquisition and installation costs, installation, operation andmaintenance performed by irrigation district staffs with minimal need for on-sitetechnical support).This paper examines the on-going effort to develop and refine this concept through casestudies of two demonstration projects in Nebraska.