Objectifs scientifiques et projet de recherche

Despite considerable growth in industrial and service sectors, agriculture remains an important sector of Vietnam’s economy. In 2014, agriculture, forestry and fishing accounted for 18.12 percent of Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP); and approximately 50 percent of the employed labor force was engaged in these areas. Nowadays, agriculture in Vietnam is driven by many factors:
1 - Consequences of climate change (flooding, drought and salinization) which lead to crop failure;
2 - Competition with agricultural products imported from China and other countries in ASEAN;
3 - Reduced competitiveness as a “low cost” producer in the international market because of the pressure to export more high quality products while production costs increase;
4 - Change in the way of using water (increase of water use in growing high value crops such as vegetables, fruit trees and flowers; increase of water use in industrial and service sectors).
With all these factors, the water demands for agriculture (and also for industry and cities) increase while the quantity of usable water decreases due to many reasons: waste of water, pollution of water resources caused by the overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers, by unprocessed domestic wastewater from residential areas and industrial wastewater from factories, etc.
Irrigation systems which aim at distributing water resources to different demands are the key for food safety in Vietnam. As water is a scarce and shared resource, there could be conflicts among water demands. The challenge for decision makers of irrigation systems is how to balance water availability and demand, economic and environmental requirements. The difficulties increase when we consider large systems with numerous water uses, with unequal distribution and requirements of water resources among different regions and seasons. Thus, it is necessary to have an intelligent support system that helps the administrators and policy makers to make wise decisions in the interest of optimizing the operation of irrigation systems according to multiple objectives such as economical objective, the satisfaction of different government policies and the minimization of negative effects of water use on the natural environment.

Unités IRD

3W20900 : UMMISCO

Partenaires / Unités de recherche associés

TLU : Thuy Loi University

Responsable

M. Ngoc-doanh NGUYEN

Correspondants

M. Tri NGUYEN-HUU

Disciplines scientifiques

Sciences de la Terre, univers, espace

Thématique(s)

The goal that we aim at here is not only to develop an intelligent support system but to develop a framework for intelligent support systems that (1) could be applied for optimizing the operation of different irrigation systems in Vietnam and also in other countries that have similar agricultural infrastructure and culture as Laos, Cambodia, and (2) could integrate different models developed by different softwares. Bac Hung Hai Irrigation (BHHI) system, which lies in the northern Vietnam and is the second biggest irrigation system in Vietnam, is chosen as the main case study of our framework. To reach our goal, we propose a project including three main work packages (WPs):
WP1 - Data analysis: The goal of this work package is to collect raw data from different sources then clean, select, transform and model this data to discover useful information to support decision making and to provide necessary input data for the modelling and simulation work package.
WP2 - Modelling and Simulation: This work package aims at supporting an experimental equipment (computer models) in order to better understand the studied irrigation system and to test different scenarios. We will base on a hybrid modelling and simulation in which four types of models will be created and implemented (hydrologic model, hydraulic model, mass balance model and agent-based model).
WP3 - Operation Optimization: The objective of this work is (1) to verify/to evaluate if the current operation of BHHI is optimized then to propose better solutions if needed; and (2) to do operation optimization of BHHI in some extreme cases (flooding, drought and salinization).