Water is vital for ensuring food security for the world’s population, and agriculture is the biggest consumer, amounting to 70% of freshwater. The water wastage is caused mainly by leakages in distribution and irrigation systems, and in the field application methods. The most common technique, surface irrigation, wastes a high percentage of the water by wetting areas where no plants benefit from it. Localized irrigation can use water more efficiently and effectively, avoiding both under-irrigation and over-irrigation. However, in an attempt to avoid under-irrigation, farmers feed more water than is needed resulting not only in productivity losses, but also water is wasted. Therefore, technology should be developed and deployed for sensing the level of water required by the plantation and for flowing the water to places where and when needed. The SWAMP project addresses these issues by using the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, autonomous devices, and other related technologies.
The challenges addressed by the SWAMP project are the following:
1) Reducing effort in software development for IoT-based smart applications;
2) Automating advanced platforms and integrating different technologies and components;
3) The integration of heterogeneous and advanced sensors, particularly flying sensors (drones) providing precision in the water supply for irrigation;
4) The use of a Software Platform together with technologies such as IoT, Big Data, Cloud/Fog and drones for the deployment of pilot applications for smart water management;
5) Proposing, testing, and validating new business models for using IoT in smart water management settings;
6) Technological components must be flexible and adaptable enough to adapt to different contexts and to be replicable in different locations and contexts.
The SWAMP project will develop a high-precision smart irrigation system concept for agriculture, depicted in Figure 1. The main idea is to enable the optimizations of irrigation, water distribution, and consumption based on a holistic analysis that collects information from all aspects of the system, including even the natural water cycle and the cumulated knowledge related to growing particular plants. It results in savings to all parties as it detects all the leakages and losses and guarantees better the availability of water in situations where water supply is limited.
Figure 1. Precision irrigation based on smart water management
As depicted by Figure 1, we identify three broad phases in a water management system for agriculture:
W1: Water reserve: water reserves coming from different sources such as rivers, lakes, dams, and aquifers, which follow the natural water cycle.
W2: Water distribution: water is transported from W1 to the final usage place (W3) through a network of elements such as canals, pipes, pumps, valves, gateways, and monitoring devices. SWAMP will provide solutions for W2. Water distribution may assume different configurations depending on the region or country, but there is always the need for moving water from the reserve to the field. On the one hand, sometimes water resources are carefully used and controlled by a central authority, like in many Italian locations, where consortia manage a network of water distribution canals. On the other hand, sometimes W1, W2, and W3 belong to the same property and therefore are fully integrated, remarkably in many Brazilian agriculture areas. In the latter case, W2 is much simpler but still requires careful management.
W3: Water consumption: in agriculture, one of the key uses of water is irrigation, which can be performed by different techniques.
The SWAMP platform will provide mechanisms for data acquisition from heterogeneous sensors, decision-making using a variety of different techniques, and changing system behavior by sending commands to actuators. For Water Consumption (W3) the SWAMP platform will provide real-time responses for adapting irrigation as the environmental conditions change. On the other hand, as changes in water distribution are performed in different timescales, the management loop for W2 will be longer. Also, and not less important, is the integration of W2 and W3 management systems, as water usage triggers water distribution.