Towards water sustainability in agriculture through closed-loop irrigation

水对我们的日常生活是必不可少的。在过去的十年里，世界经济论坛一直将确保水和粮食安全的挑战视为最重大的全球风险之一。人口增长是导致全球供水危机的主要因素。淡水的最大用途是农业，约占淡水总消耗量的70%。在加拿大，阿尔伯塔省、不列颠哥伦比亚省和萨斯喀彻温省是灌溉用水量最大的三个省。根据阿尔伯塔政府的一份报告，阿尔伯塔分配给灌溉的水已经封顶。灌溉面积的任何进一步增加都需要主要来自水效率的提高。在萨斯喀彻温省25年水安全计划中，有效用水被确定为缓解供水压力增加的首要行动领域。农业是淡水消耗量最大的农业，但农业灌溉用水效率较低（估计约为50%至60%），由于目前的灌溉策略的开环性质。在目前的农业灌溉实践中，要灌溉的水量和进行灌溉的时间基本上由灌溉者预先确定（农民）基于灌溉者的知识和各种收集的辅助田地数据（例如，天气信息，蒸散（ET）率，随机采样的土壤湿度）在一个开环的方式。然而，在过程控制中，开环控制是相当不精确的。也就是说，开环灌溉通常会导致过度灌溉或灌溉不足，这意味着水资源利用效率低。该项目的目标是关闭灌溉决策过程，开发闭环精确灌溉解决方案，以显着提高农业用水效率。该项目具有巨大的社会影响力，将有助于水的可持续性、国家和全球粮食安全以及温室气体减排。

Water is essential for our daily life. The challenge of ensuring water and food security has been consistentlyrecognized as one of the most significant global risks by the World Economic Forum over the past decade.Population growth is the primary factor causing the global water supply crisis. The most substantial use offreshwater is in agriculture, which accounts for about 70% of the total freshwater consumption. In Canada,Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan are the top three irrigation water consumers. According to a report of theGovernment of Alberta, the water allocated to irrigation in Alberta is already capped. Any further increase inirrigated acres needs to come primarily from improvements in water efficiency. In the 25 Year SaskatchewanWater Security Plan, efficient use of water is identified as the No. 1 action area to relieve the increasedpressures on water supplies. While agriculture consumes the largest amount of freshwater, the averageagriculture irrigation water efficiency is low (estimated to be around 50% to 60%) due to the open-loop natureof the current irrigation strategy.In the current agricultural irrigation practice, the amount of water to be irrigated and the time to apply theirrigation are essentially determined in advance by the irrigator (the farmer) based on the irrigator's knowledgeand various collected auxiliary field data (e.g., weather information, evapotranspiration (ET) rate, randomlysampled soil moisture) in an open-loop fashion. However, it is well recognized in process control thatopen-loop control is quite imprecise. Namely, open-loop irrigation generally leads to either over-irrigation orunder-irrigation, which implies low water-use efficiency. The goal of this project is to close the irrigationdecision-making process to develop a closed-loop precision irrigation solution to significantly improve thewater-use efficiency in agriculture. This project has a great societal impact and will contribute to watersustainability, national and global food security, and greenhouse gases emission reduction.