Modelling of Rivers for Control Design

Agriculture is the world wide biggest consumer of water. However, a large portion of the water is wasted due to inefficient distribution from lakes and reservoirs via rivers to farms. More efficient water distribution can be achieved with the help of improved control and decision support systems, but in order to design such systems, river models are required. Traditionally, the Saint Venant equations which are partial differential equations, have been used for modelling rivers. They are however difficult to use for control design and thus, simpler alternative models are sought. In this paper, system identification techniques are used to obtain models which are useful for control design. We show through experimental validation and actual control design that simple time-delay and integrator-delay models are sufficient for control design.