Online published on 15 December, 2011.
Canals have been the principal means of distributing irrigation water since the early civilisations. However, the performance of irrigation systems, which use approximately 70% of the available water world-wide, is being called into question. The technology used to control canals and hence their performance changed little until the second half of the nineteenth century when the early work on performance enhancement started with the first generation of activities focussed on automatic monitoring and regulation. This paper provides an overview of the experiences gained over the last 20 years in the application of technology to enhance the performance of large scale irrigation systems through improvements to monitoring and control. Improving the performance and productivity of irrigated agriculture is seen as a critical initiative to double world food production by 2050.
