A Web-based Decision Support System for Surface Irrigation Design. Sofware Development

Abstract

This paper presents the Web-based decision support system SADREG for design and selection of farm surface irrigation systems: furrows, basin and border irrigation. The design component applies database information and produces a set of design alternatives in agreement with the user options through several simulation and computational tools. The selection component applies multicriteria analysis to rank those alternatives. Comparing with the conventional stand-alone PC-program, an Internet application has a larger flexibility enabling the access by users worldwide, particularly in areas where expert technical support for surface irrigation improvement is more incipient. Moreover, it allows an easier transfer and share of knowledge and tools to improve the procedures of irrigation design. The Web SADREG application includes the Web module that creates the user interface, data fluxes, showing numerical and graphical data, and the simulation engine, which runs the simulation models on the server. The development applies the PHP and C++ languages to achieve a better flexibility and to minimize client system requirements and SQLServer for data storing, thus allowing a simultaneous connection of several users. During the simulation process the users are informed about the input parameters, the design process and the output. An online help and information about irrigation equipments and guidelines for a good irrigation practices is available. This approach results on a better service quality, avoiding package installation and is more versatile to upgrade and to integrate other data and models. This software, available on http://sadreg.safe-net.eu Web site, is currently being tested.