Decision support system for irrigation maintenance in Indonesia: a multi-objective optimization study

Abstract

Maintenance of irrigation infrastructure is essential to sustain food production and farmers' earnings. Given the shortage of funds for maintenance in developing countries, it is critical to understand the degradation of the function of irrigation systems so that optimal budget allocations can be made. A case study of Indonesia proposes an Infrastructure Density Index that can be used to justify budgets for regions with distinct characteristics. Current policy and practice in Indonesia is to allocate the budget uniformly, based on unit cost per hectare. Thus, the existing system provides unvarying budgets without considering the irrigation assets in each network system of a region. Regional differences should be taken into consideration during budget allocations since each region has different infrastructure characteristics related to the density of hydraulic structures, length of irrigation canals, and area of the irrigation system. A budgeting model has been developed by using non-linear programming and an analytic hierarchy process to promote more reasonable budgeting allocation policy. The case study focuses on seven irrigation regions in West Java Province, Indonesia. Fair budgeting strategy is illustrated by the relationship between structure density and the Budgeting Index.