IRRINET- expert system for irrigation scheduling

Water demand management in agriculture is a key issue for Emilia-Romagna policy makers. Farmers and growers are facing major challenges due to climate change, scarcity of water resource & quality-oriented consumers. IRRINET is a tool developed involving land reclamation authorities, farmers and research centres in the frame of Emilia-Romagna Regional Action Plans for Rural Development from 2007 to 2020. The service has been improved year-by-year following the needs through users’ feedback and applying the field research results. Each parameter used in the model has been calibrated during field trial for almost 40 years to evaluate the variability of the crops, soil and climate condition. It makes IRRINET a robust system that respond efficiently to the majority of agricultural local conditions. The platform allows customization of the service as soilwater sensor integration, user specified crop coefficient and actuators control. Everything is connected through web server to the input web-db. IRRINET system is in constant develpment, integrating solutions and data coming from different systems and actors. Moreover it is an open system that permits the integration of soil, crop and environental sensors within the IRRINET regional DSS: farmers can integrate their own soil-plant sensor system benefitting from an increased realiability of the monitored data, to improve the availability of site-specific information and to automatize data integration and interactions.