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A Fresh Look at the Debate on the Causes of Poor Performance of Certain Irrigation Schemes: The Complexity of Hydraulic Behaviour of Canal Systems
Author(s) -
Plusquellec Hervé
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
irrigation and drainage
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.421
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1531-0361
pISSN - 1531-0353
DOI - 10.1002/ird.2340
Subject(s) - irrigation , hierarchy , hydraulics , irrigation management , water resource management , control (management) , business , operations management , computer science , economics , engineering , environmental science , management , market economy , ecology , biology , aerospace engineering
The paper starts with a retrospective review of the debate on the causes of poor performance of irrigation schemes in the 1990s which resulted in a sharp decline in the interest of financing agencies in the irrigation sector and a shift to a new model of irrigation projects focusing on participatory irrigation management associated with rehabilitation works. Evidence is overwhelming that many new‐type projects have had mixed results. It is evident that improved management alone cannot boost the performance of poorly designed irrigation systems. Design flaws should be corrected. This paper goes on to discuss the complexity of the hydraulics of irrigation canals and the intricate behaviour of a hierarchy of canal systems with innumerable numbers of nodes that should respond to changes in demand and supply. Minor differences at the head of main canals may result in serious deviations from the planned operation and even extreme differences in delivery or chaos at the tail ends. It was only in the mid‐1980s that hydraulic academics studied these phenomena of instability related to the sensitivity of control structures and their interaction. Admittedly occasional observers from other disciplines could not identify the technical causes of the poor performance of some irrigation schemes. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.