NIREUS: A new software for the analysis of on-demand pressurized collective irrigation networks

Abstract

On-demand collective irrigation networks are hydraulic systems designed to deliver and distribute irrigation water from the water source to the irrigation perimeter, while providing users with the flexibility to decide on the time, the duration and the frequency with which they intend to use their hydrant. This paper presents the newly developed software NIREUS, which is developed for implementing the performance analysis of such networks. The performance analysis with NIREUS gives an overview of the operational status of the network under study by implementing the model of the indexed characteristic curves, while on the other hand, NIREUS determines the pipes/hydrants of the network that present, or are most likely to present, operational problems by implementing the performance analysis at hydrant level. This information is particularly useful for the management of existing networks as well as for the planning of future interventions and rehabilitation activities. The paper also describes the main functions of NIREUS and the characteristics that differentiate it from other existing software. Moreover, a new indicator which is incorporated in NIREUS is presented, in which the whole magnitude of the operational efficiency of a hydrant is depicted. The validation of the new software is made through a comparative application of NIREUS and COPAM to an existing on-demand pressurized collective irrigation network. Results proved the usefulness of NIREUS in highlighting both the weak and the strong parts of the network. The validation procedure gave a very close approximation of the respective values calculated with COPAM with the relative error ranging between 0.0% to 0.36% for the indexed characteristic curve of C50 and 0.01% to 0.22% for the indexed characteristic curves of C70.