Mathematical programming approaches for procurement in water irrigation systems
As part of his secondment to ALSIA, Manuel Díaz from UPV conducted a teaching session on “Mathematical programming approaches for procurement in water irrigation systems”.
The development tools used to improve water management acquire special relevance, particularly when the area has a high water resource deficit. Currently, this problem is present in many countries as a result of the increase in population, the decrease in water resources and the increase in energy prices. Mathematical programming is an analytical procedure to determine the optimum allocation of scarce resources. These allocation problems can be presented in very different ways. In this sense, mathematical programming techniques are employed in a large number of problems, such as production planning, supplier selection, transport and distribution problems, forest planning or scheduling flights, among others. The goal of this teaching session was to introduce the audience in the use of mathematical programming for addressing the replenishment process in a local irrigation network with the aim to decide what volume is procured (source, quantity and timetable) as well as what volume is stored while minimizing the involved total costs. A review of different mathematical programming approaches for addressing this type of problems was presented, and finally, a case study from a real water irrigation network was used to demonstrate the benefits of mathematical programming as a decision making tool.
RUC-APS 