A Decision Support System for Irrigation Management in Thailand: Case Study of Tak City Agricultural Production

Abstract

Water is essential for agriculture in many world regions and for achieving sustainability in production systems. Maximizing net returns with the available resources is significant, but doing so is a complex problem, owing to the many factors that affect this process. In this study, a decision support system (DSS) incorporating a crop planning model is developed for identifying optimal cropping plans and irrigation management. The model estimates crop yield, production, water requirement, and net income. In this system, the Simulated Annealing algorithm (SA) is used as an optimization tool inside the DSS developed, and the result is as robust as the exact solution with higher computational efficiency. From the model applied, it is found that the current crop pattern and water distribution plan used in the study area should be improved. The computational analysis also found that of the five plans proposed, three plans could produce the highest generated income. On contrary, the current strategy used by Tak’s province farmer has the lowest generated income. This result shows that if a better-designed and more efficient crop planning method was, should be used instead.