Artificial Intelligence in Water Management

With the ever-growing population and the challenges that the human-kind is facing currently such as climate change, poverty and hunger, there is a need of tech-based agriculture that would be highly efficient, productive and sustainable. Artificial intelligence in the present times holds the key for a tech-based revolution in agriculture. Artificial intelligence is basically a branch of computer science that imitates through processes, learning abilities and knowledge management. The core of artificial intelligence lies with artificial neural networks that are at the most similar to human brain neurons and are connected to each other by artificial synapses. Water is one of the major inputs required to crop fields. Optimization of their application is the major aim for most of the agronomic practices, but due to the spatial, temporal variability within crop fields and lack of site-specific information in real time there is a great hindrance to such optimized applications. AI based water management helps in assessing farm fields at their micro-climate levels and make efficient decisions keeping in mind the real crop needs and thus resulting in enhanced productivity levels and resource use efficiency, maximized returns and improved soil health. These technologies integrate historical, real time and forecasted data from various resources to make fruitful decisions. Data can be obtained from different sensors located in the crop fields or through unmanned aerial vehicle mounted spectral camera or through remote sensing. Data obtained as such is transferred to GIS based software to create digital maps which are fed to decision support systems to make efficient decisions or provide optimized input application recommendations. These recommendations are in last forwarded to variable rate applicators for site specific application to achieve sustainable enhanced productivity levels along with natural resource conservation.