An integrated drainage network analysis system for agricultural drainage management. Part 1: the system

This is the first of two papers that elaborate an integrated drainage netwo rk analysis system (IDNAS) for agricultural drainage management. In this pa per, the system components, functions and implementation are presented. The IDNAS comprises an agricultural drainage network module, an evapotranspira tion (ET) module and an event-based spatio-temporal module. The network mod ule is designed to model a typical agricultural drainage system and to perf orm the specific tasks for network assessment, monitoring and simulation in a geographical information system (GIS). The ET module is used to estimate real-time evapotranspiration from remotely sensed imagery and to update th e water balance model. The spatio-temporal module comprises a computer wate rtable simulation model and routines providing linkage between event data a nd GIS thematic layer for event-based analysis. Specialized data processing routines have been developed to link the network data model with temporal hydrological modeling to allow computation of important network parameters such as flow travel time, discharge and capacity, and to dynamically simula te drainage response to individual rainfall events. A common interface has been developed to link those components, and to interact with the users. Th e Arc/Info GIS was used for the system implementation. With those component s and functions, the system is well suited for assessment and management of agricultural drainage systems. In the second paper, case studies are prese nted which show how the system can be used for efficient agricultural drain age management, such as drainage capacity assessment, discharge computation , and event-based acid drainage evaluation and management. (C) 2000 Elsevie r Science B.V. All rights reserved.