Analysis of Spatial Scenarios Aiding Decision Making for Regional Irrigation Water-Demand Planning

Abstract

Regional irrigation water-demand planning is utilized to establish appropriate cropping patterns and estimate irrigation water demand. Although optimization methods have been extensively adopted, uncertainties of meteorological conditions and the complexity of spatial contexts make developing explicit and structured decision making extremely difficult. Rather than generating a single optimal solution, decision makers prefer to generate several possible scenarios and compare results. This study proposes a novel spatial scenario-based planning framework, with a database, model base, and scenario-setting modules, to generate flexible spatial planning scenarios for improving irrigation water-demand planning. Possible demand planning scenarios for irrigation managers are discussed. A prototype of the proposed scenario-based framework is implemented on a geographic information system platform to assist in spatial decision making. Demand planning during a drought period for the Chia-Nan irrigation command area, the largest one in Taiwan, is adopted as a case study to demonstrate the proposed framework for spatial scenario analysis.