Designing Sustainable Irrigation Networks With InfoWorks WS Pro

By Trevor English

According to the U.S. EPA, it’s estimated that 50% of water used for irrigation is lost to leakage, evaporation, runoff, or other issues stemming from inefficient irrigation management and design. That means that roughly 35% of the world’s global water supply is lost each year due to these issues. That’s a staggering amount.

Irrigation isn’t just an agricultural food supply issue, it also comes to play in areas where maintaining grass, plants, and foliage is essential. Sporting venues utilize irrigation systems for their fields. Large gardens or commercial venues leverage irrigation to keep their greenery alive and well. There are even industrial use cases like dust prevention where irrigated water comes into play.

At the core of the irrigation challenge are four main types of irrigation: surface, sprinkler, subsurface, and drip. Each of these irrigation types presents various management and modeling challenges, with some utilizing pressurized pipe networks and others open channels. This complexity necessitates software tooling that can handle open channel and pressurized flow in the same system.