Managing irrigation water resources with economic benefit and energy consumption: an interval linear multi-objective fractional optimization model under multiple uncertainties

Abstract

At present, water shortage has increasingly become one of the key factors restricting the sustainable development of agriculture. And during the process of agricultural production, the energy consumption has also been paid more and more attention. Therefore, in order to deal with the above problems, an improved interval linear multi-objective fractional programming model (ILMOFPM) was developed, which has the characteristic is that it not only focuses on the optimal allocation of the amount of irrigation water resources, but also on improving irrigation water resources use efficiency. To demonstrate its effectiveness and applicability, ILMOFPM was applied to a case study in Jinghuiqu irrigation district, Shaanxi Province, China. Maximum economic benefit per unit of water resource and minimum energy consumption per unit of water resource were selected as the planning objectives. A series of irrigation water resources optimal allocation schemes were obtained, which could give the decision makers the desired optimal scheme according to the actual situation. Based on the results of the established model, economic benefit and energy consumption generally decreased as the representative hydrological years changed from wet to dry, and the total crop planting area also showed a decreased trend. Moreover, a lot of water resources was saved by introducing crop evapotranspiration and effective precipitation in the developed model, 57.45%, 44.17%, 39.33% of total water resources consumption were saved under different representative hydrological years, respectively.