Ant colony optimization approach for optimizing irrigation system layout: Case of gravity and collective network

Abstract

Irrigation is the artifcial employment of water to the plants which is used to assist in the growing of agricultural crops. There are several methods of irrigation that differ in how the water is distributed between fields. In fact irrigation systems can be classified into two main categories: gravity irrigation and pressurized irrigation. The allocation of water to the fields is done either collectively or individually. Whatever the used irrigation technique, the goal is to have a well-designed irrigation system. This research applies the metaheuristic method of ant colony optimization (ACO) to design an optimal irrigation layout. The proposed approach uses ACO rules to generate the possible links between fields which distribute water to farmers. And the algorithm ant system was applied to find the optimal link.