Layout Design of Irrigation Networks in Highly Parcelled Territories Using Geographical Information System

Traditional irrigation zones in the east of Spain have been denoted by the high level of parcellation. The layout of the irrigation network design in highly parcelled territories presents an important degree of difficulty, the previous experience of the designer in this task being crucial in the final result. In this work, a new heuristic algorithm for layout of the irrigation network design is presented. We start from a classical graph theory algorithm (Dijkstra’s algorithm) used for solving the shortest path spanning tree problem. This algorithm is modified to assign weights to the arcs and plot limits are used as if they were the arcs of a graph. The algorithm is implemented on a geographical information system, thus creating an application that automatically generates the layout of the irrigation network design. The only necessary initial data are the origin of the network (supply point) and the hydrants (delivery points). The advantage of this heuristic is that the subjectivity introduced for the designer is removed. Moreover, it allows for solving complex problems, and therefore it is applicable to highly parcelled zones, where the number of vertices and edges is so high that it would inhibit calculating capacity of any optimization process. A practical example is presented, in which the layout design obtained by applying the heuristic is compared with the original existing layout.