co Benadé of NBSystems and is currently in use at all the major irrigation schemes (21 of them) across
South Africa and it manages an irrigated area of more than 150 000
ha including more than 10 000
farmers.
The main benefits of using the
WAS are:
The minimizing of water distribution losses.
The excellent management of
water quota allocations and water usage per farmer.
The ability to upload and download water orders through the
use of the internet.
The availability of an extensive
list of water reports and graphs
on farm and scheme level. See
figure 1 and figure 2
The automatic uploading of relevant reports and graphs to any
website.
The increased productivity of
scheme management personnel.
An integrated debit accounting
system that improves debit management.
The availability of an integrated
bulk SMS system to communi-
cate water ordered and water
use information to farmers.
The improvement of the overall
water administration management on irrigation schemes.
WAS consists of nine modules that
are integrated into a single program that can be used on a single
PC or a multi-user environment.
These modules can be implemented
partially or as a whole, depending
on the requirements of the specific
scheme or office. The nine modules
are:
Administration module, Water order module, Measured data module, Water release module, Report
module, Accounts module, Crop
water use module, Dam information module and a bulk SMS
module.
It is also important to emphasize
that a computerized water management system like the WAS prevents
human errors that can lead to potentially huge water losses but it
still needs a dedicated individual or
team to apply excellent water management principles. Feedback from
the WAS users at training courses
indicates that after converting, it is
considered impossible to manage
irrigation schemes without the use
of the WAS.
One of the schemes where it is implemented and managed successfully is at the Lower Olifants River
Water Association (LORWUA) which
is one of the largest irrigation farming enterprises in the Republic of
South Africa and excellent water
saving through excellent irrigation
management is achieved. They
managed to supply the correct
amount of water to the right place
at the right time with the minimum
water loss within the limitations of
the Lower Olifants River irrigation
scheme system and that is done by
the implementation of a Water Administration System.
With the implementation of the
WAS program at LORWUA, they
managed to decrease the losses
from 35 % to 25 %. A 28, 6% saving (10% points), which is equivalent to 8.5 million m3 per year. This
saving is the equivalent of an additional 696 ha that could have been
irrigated additionally per year given
the fact that the full water quota at
LORWUA is 12 200 m3/ha. Using
Figure 2: Measured data converted into graphs