Operational management of water conveyance in canals and rivers

Abstract

After a historical overview of irrigation canals, their strategic importance and recent trends, we define more precisely the free surface hydraulic systems we analyse in this article. We present their features that make their management difficult but essential. We then define more precisely what we call "management", with different nuances, including operational management, and we use concepts from production management to better analyze it. Finally, we detail one of these concepts namely the "devices" used to implement the operational management.