Estimation and Control of Water Flow along a Moroccan Canal

Abstract

Two methods are presented for water resource management. The water is sup-plied from a dam and vehiculed in a canal for irrigation and urban water supply, They consist in predicting the water consumption on the basis of past flow data.Both methods are based on linearization of the daily water consumption profile. The first method is mainly empirical and based on the statistical study of past data. The second consists in modelling the error between the predicted and the actual water consumptions as a gaussian process for which the mean value and the variance functions are assumed constant on preassigned time intervals.A recursive algorithm based on the stochastic approximation method is proposed for estimating the mean-value and the variance for each time interval. The estimated values at the end of each interval serve as initial values for the consecutive time interval. Prediction of water consumption is necessary to minimize waste or shortage in water supply, i.e.match supply with the needed actual consumption. This can be achieved by on-line regulation of the water flow. Such a regulation reduces the need to construct expensive and undesired water containers along the can.