Author(s): Gabriele Farina; Marco Pilotti; Luca Milanesi

Linked Author(s): Marco Pilotti

Keywords: Irrigation Channel Network; Saint-Venant Equations; Water Management; Numerical Simulation; Consorzio Irrigazioni Cremonesi

Abstract: Consorzio Irrigazioni Cremonesi (CIC in the following) is the most important irrigation consortium in the province of Cremona (northern Italy) in terms of amount of discharged water for irrigation purposes and it manages a channel network that dates back to the 16th century. The water distribution provided by CIC is regulated by a complex and rigid timetable of the water turn, which defines the amount of water delivered to each user and the time duration. Considering that the management of the irrigation water system is stiff, based on pure historical custom and relying on the practical experience of a small group of people, we expect that this traditional management could become unsuitable in the future and practical experience could be of little use to optimize water distribution in new scenario dominated by climate change. To manage this transition, CIC aims to build a mathematical model of its complex channel network based on the one-dimensional formulation of the Saint- Venant equations. In this paper we present the numerical model implemented to perform unsteady flow simulation in the irrigation channel network along with some preliminary results.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/978-90-833476-1-5_iahr40wc-p0437-cd

Year: 2023