Revisiting Telemetry in Pakistan’s Indus Basin Irrigation System

Abstract

The Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) lacks a system for measuring canal inflows, storages, and outflows that is trusted by all parties, transparent, and accessible. An earlier attempt for telemetering flows in the IBIS did not deliver. There is now renewed interest in revisiting telemetry in Pakistan’s IBIS at both national and provincial scales. These investments are typically approached with an emphasis on hardware procurement contracts. This paper describes the experience from field installations of flow measurement instruments and communication technology to make the case that canal flows can be measured at high frequency and displayed remotely to the stakeholders with minimal loss of data and lag time between measurement and display. The authors advocate rolling out the telemetry system across IBIS as a data as a service (DaaS) contract rather than as a hardware procurement contract. This research addresses a key issue of how such a DaaS contract can assure data quality, which is often a concern with such contracts. The research findings inform future telemetry investment decisions in large-scale irrigation systems, particularly the IBIS.