Questions/Answers

The Agricultural Research Development Agency (Public Organization) or ARDA is a research funding agency in agriculture and related fields aimed to promote development, technology and innovation connected to the UN water‐energy‐food nexus including the crucial BIG DATA analysis constructed to manage Thailand’s water resources more effectively. Thailand is regarded as vulnerable to natural disasters caused by droughts and floods that occur almost annually. There was a great outcry in Thailand following the 2011 flood crisis which was sandwiched between widespread droughts. The people felt confused, hurt and ultimately angry after being hurt by the impacts of both too much and too little water. The disasters also caused unavoidable impacts on Thai agriculture systems in which play a crucial role in the nation’s economic development and food production. In response to such challenging problems, ARDA initiated cooperated research grants for the King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB) and Thai Royal Irrigation Department (RID) to create a system that interlinks and integrates the Big DATA set of natural resources, arial topography, cropping patterns, and meteorological – hydrological information to be used harmoniously for water management in Chao Phraya River Basin. It is the country’s largest watershed covering 20,523.42 square kilometers and 19 provinces in central Thailand. The Chao Phraya basin enclosed one-third of Thailand’s irrigation area offering the most intensive set of databases to be schematized towards effective agricultural water management. Big DATA elements were acquired from water monitoring system, agricultural model outputs, water reservation-operation data, and crop production model outputs. The main objective of this granted research is to promote academic and governmental collaborations to evaluate the most suitable paradigm to fit each of selected agricultural patterns, resulting in better management for cultivation sites and offer a more sound relationship between the consumption of water and agricultural value added outcomes.

The heart of this project is sustainability and responsible use of natural resources. The ARDA granted fund enable Thailand’s core organizations to work in concert toward Big DATA integration, which is largely automated and shared. The research outcomes yield to shorten operations time yet broaden accessibility of the distributed “Waterway Network System”. The constant fine-tuning operations of water to be managed from reservoirs and diversion dams down to the service area replaced the old-fashioned interval planning of seasonal water management. The platform also incorporates an early warning system to monitor against the nation’s flood and drought crisis.

This project is corresponding directly to the SDGs 12.2. To achieve sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources. RID implemented the digital platform constructed by KMUTNB to monitor, enhance, and generate inclusive reports relating to water resource operation and management. This integrated water management platform also provides invaluable data assisting toward prompt decision making which resulted in more efficient operation plans for reservoirs and other resources. The obtained data suggests the most suitable cropping calendar and irrigation service schemes according to water resource budget and irrigation water expense needed for each site. The platform also responds effectively to sudden schematics changes and offer solutions through filtered data science and efficiency-based approaches. Outputs from “the water flow pathway model” for instance, suggest the most suitable pathway from start by releasing water from the water reservoirs to the irrigation sites accordingly to available water, and these enhanced water management performances are achieved digitally through more effective diversion, drainage, and reservation of natural water resources against critical flood and drought conditions. Moreover, the platform also enables more environmental sound strategic and policy to be constructed which can impose more recovery and renovation regulations of the steams and the natural waterways.

To address the sustainability of the platform, KMUTNB and RID include consistency monitoring system and evaluation routines into the platform aimed to update the capability for responsive future upgrade and gear the platform away from being outdated in this digital era. Prospective researchers can expand their need to improve the SWOC’s and its co-platform smart agriculture through their future aspect research. Fundamentally, the training of next generation staffs to pass on such knowledge is carried out through the universities courses along with online instruction to promote the platforms and their applications for everyone to download and use without cost.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives has opened its Smart Water Operation Center (SWOC) to link data with all relevant agencies for water resource management in a systematic manner. The center located inside the RID Headquarters on Samsen Road in Bangkok will also serve as a public relations center to handle information management from related agencies. Thai Government also attaches great importance to swifty address water resource management problems. Due to massive science DATA presented in SWOC, it is crucial to find the platform capable of Big DATA delivery responsively. Therefore, ARDA initiated cooperated research platform to be upgraded in SWOC center which can effectively advance water management plan from day-by-day to 12 months calendar. The platform also enables the government agencies to practice and impose their most suitable policies and guidelines. For instance, the Land Development Department and the Department of Agricultural Extension use big DATA from SWOC center to provide proper cultivation patterns for farmers in the Chao Phraya River Basin through the nation’s online Agricultural Map for Adaptative Management or “AgriMap”. Whenever the country faces water related crisis, SWOC’s platform will easily and effectively be able to communicate and devise mitigating plans to ease up such situations.

Water is a vital for life and way of living including the agricultural based country like Thailand. Most of Thai families do farm for living. United together, everyone in family lives their simple life. Prolonged water crisis effects those families, separates them and cause gender inequality in consequence. Women and child were forced to live in less suitable sanitation and hygiene facilities. The ARDA water management platform helps diminishes such problem through its ability to predicted and plan water supply appropriately. Crop cultivation, fisheries, and livestock in the service area will have adequately water supply throughout both seasons.

Target groups that receive the positive effects from this program comprise of 1) The Royal Irrigation Department can use NARK4.0 program in the management of an unstable water supply due to the changing of world’s climate and in the water using for agriculture to alternate the water management and to plan the suitable water alleviation under the fluctuating changes of the water situation. 2) The government can employ the plans of the water supply management and the early expected crop cultivation to locate the planting zonation in relative with the water quantity, soil property, and support of the markets. It leads to imposing the policies for the agricultural production for domestic consumption, the international exportation to increase the competitive capability, and the practically measuring regulation concerning reality. 3) Farmers can use the WaterSMART and iFarmer applications to know the information about the predicted results of the quantity of the water supply and the plan for the water alleviation from the irrigation projects, situated on Chao Phraya River Basin. Therefore, they can plan the conception of changing crop cultivation.

The operation of the project is as three continuous projects. 2015 marked the beginning of the development of decision support systems for the integrated and timely water management (NARK 4.0). It was the result of the first project that was the development research project of the mathematic model in Chao Phraya River Basin. However, to operate the water resource, benefiting for farmers, in 2016, the second program was developed to create the instrument for the management of the proper cultivation sites. The AgriMap, WaterSMART, and iFarmer applications could calculate a quantity of water using depending on each cultivar, the crop cultivation in Chao Phraya River Basin, and the agricultural database system such as a land utilization, the potentials of surface water and groundwater, and the proper soil. Reporting the weather, the amount of precipitation, runoff, and water in the reservoirs, the plan of water and cultivation site alleviations and the water quality of the Royal Irrigation Department now happened more rapidly. In 2017, the third program was improved to automatically link the information database systems from various agencies and developed the operation in the water management to encourage in deciding for a staff of the irrigation department from the daily water situation report to impose the coping plan for the actual water situation and its fluctuating changes. Overall, the operation in the third year created NARK4.5 program, thaiwaterway website, and Waterway application for the monitoring process. Furthermore, there was the training for staff of the Royal Irrigation Department, the coordination in data, results in program usage, problem monitoring, offering the solving suggestions, and the evaluation of the performance in using the program in the 27 irrigation projects in Chao Phraya River Basin.

Obstacles in this operation were in the information that must be completed in order to develop the model. It covers the entire sub-watershed areas and information comes from the precipitation stations, monitoring online daily to adjust the accuracy and predict the weather precisely. These obstacles were aided because many agencies worked in cooperation with each other providing the information to the Irrigation Hydrology Center of the Royal Irrigation Department. Subsequently, the project can follow the database about an expected quantity of precipitation, monitored daily to follow, prepare, and plan to cope with any situation quickly and in a timely fashion.

The research is a cultural innovation that changes patterns in the water management by the Royal Irrigation Department that have been in use for decades. A database system has been created which incorporates a decision system and an early warning danger system. It has been readily distributed to various associated agencies, including people using water. Moreover, the research is Technology Innovation that integrally applies Digital Water Management with other disciplines and the knowledge from the different agencies, using Artificial Intelligence and the mathematical model to connect with the information technologies, working as real-time and developing as online program and application.

The predicted ENSO phenomenon probability, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) derived from the world climate condition, does downscale to predict precipitation in study sites. MIKE model, created by Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI), was used to develop predicting runoff model. The Genetic-Neuro Fuzzy technique, a decision instrument in an unstable situation and unclear information, was use to improve the influx water into the water reservoirs predicting model. Finally, the hydro-economic model was developed by Reservoir Operation Study (ROS) model of the Royal Irrigation Department in cooperation with economic model, following Genetic Algorithm, developed by University of Exeter, England.

The application of AI technology as the first dimension is to integrate the working of the government agencies by developing programs in water management, called NARK4.0. For the prediction and the water situation stimulation, thaiwaterway website, developed to access the internet through computers, helps following the water situation in a timely fashion. For the second dimension, promoting the water information to all people via WaterSMART and iFarmer applications allows users to access the expected water information online. This supports with the Thailand development policy 4.0 or RID4.0 Water Intelligent System in the water management.

An essential part of the platform is known as NARK4.0 which has been implemented for RID executives and staff to use and has exponentially reduced the man-hours necessary for meteorological prediction. Moreover, Farmers themselves have direct access to this data through our independently developed WaterSMART app, making this a truly egalitarian, farmer-centered tool of empowerment. These platform are currently employed in the four of the river basin main reservoirs, namely, Bhumibol Dam, Sirikit Dam, Khwae Noi Bam-Rung-Dan Dam, and Pasak Cholasit Dam including 27 irrigation projects, the lower Chao Phraya region, and also used toward the prediction of a quantity of precipitation in Chao Phraya River Basin expanding to most of the country’s upstream watersheds including Ping, Vang, Yom, and Naan River Basins. The upper and lower Chao Phraya River Basins, and the upper Moon watershed, compromising of Lam-ta-Khong, Lam-Phra-Phloeng, Lam-Plai-Mat, Moon-Bon-Lam-Chae, and Nang-Rong are also benefited. Consequently, farmers can easily monitor the water situation and information to know the proper water supply for their sites and be able to plan water management further in advance, and to impose crop cultivation patterns with the appropriate yield and to implement prototype sites toward sustain water management in future.

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Research receives the financial budget from Agricultural Research Development Agency (public organization) and there is the commitment in the academic cooperation between the Royal Irrigation Department and King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KUMTNB) to integrate human resource. Scholars from Smart Water Operation Center and Bureau of Water Management and Hydrology, participate during the project operation and are users, receiving profits after the project was completed. The maintenance of HardWare and SoftWare is maintained by the experts and researchers from KUMTNB to follow the result, distribute the knowledge, and join the water situation stimulation.

Economic and social dimension, the providing of an adequate amount of water supply, matching with the various water demands and its ease of use results in the maximum profits for farmers and agriculture, leading to productivity improvement. Subsequently, the water assurance for farmers, approaching water for the sustainable cultivation and no effects on the nation’s core agricultural production, leads to food security and is economic development system in the long term nation’s agriculture. Political dimension, the Royal Irrigation Department uses this system to decide in imposing the policies via timely integral water management (NARK) to create seasonal water management plans.

Yes

The research project and its benefits are evaluated by the operation of Agricultural Research Development Agency (public organization). In 2020, the annual budget is set by Center of Applied Economic Research, Faculty of Economics, Kasetsart University based on the analysis of the basic benefits of the research and the evaluation of the research’s results and effects, following Alston, Norton and Pardy (1998).

(1) Output indicators consider from the number of the published paper in journals with peer review, ratio of number of cited times per the published articles, number of other published journals, number of the intellectual properties, number of the other distributing activities, and method is information search. (2) Outcomes indicators include the technological, organizational, behavioral, and conceptual results, the capability enhancement and method is the cited literature and interviewing researchers monitoring. (3) Impact indicators compose of the effects on economic, society, environment, and other aspects, and method is the users interviewing, receiving benefits from the research and of the finance.

The obtained results can be three groups depending users, is that the first receiving beneficial user is the Irrigation Department, resulting in the diminished errors in the water administration and management. The second receiving benefit user is farmers, existing in the watershed, leading to an increase the cultivation site owing to an increase in water quantity. The third receiving benefit user is Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, resulting in saving the budget in helping and providing flood relief. The impact from the evolution of benefits of research from 2016 to 2027 would be the effects on economic, society, and environment in the total cost of 930,444,289 baht. The impacts in this research can identify into benefits as following 1. Economic benefit - reduce the damage costs from the natural disasters, especially flood - drought - increase the cultivation sites 2. Social benefit - the troubles from flood-drought for people, living in Chao Phraya River Basin decrease 3. Environmental benefit - enable to use the natural resource and a quantity of the water supply more effectively.

This project operates under the cooperation of 6 associated groups as follows; 1. Agricultural Research Development Agency (Public Organization) provides the research funding to solve the agricultural problems. 2. King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB) receive research funding, and developed the decision support systems for the integrated and timely water management, and creating the stimulating model for decision to release water from the water reservoirs. They also provided the training program for staff and associated persons. 3. The Royal Irrigation Department responds to create the mathematic model, develop the hydro-economic model, and analyze as well as evaluate the impact on the vicinity areas, conception and regulation in solving the problems to upgrade the performance in the water management in Chao Phraya River Basin. 4. Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation contributes the beneficial information in predicting for the water management and land exploitation in combination with the changing climate model. 5. Office of Agricultural Economics provides information on the agricultural production and price in Chao Phraya River Basin, helping the program in developing political suggestions. 6. Farmers in Chao Phraya River Basin receive the positive impacts from the flood-drought management, and the water alleviation for the cultivation sites.

The project operation in the development to connect the database system of Research Center of water engineering and the basic structure from King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB) is a cooperation between the Royal Irrigation Department to develop the research and to use the instrument in the water management NARK4.0 program. The success results respond with the actual practical process and cooperate with Department of Land Development, Department of Fisheries, and Department of livestock to distribute the knowledge in the water utilization for individual agriculture. Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, Meteorology Department, and farmers existing in 23 irrigation projects in Chao Phraya River Basin participate in commenting and exchanging the information associated with land on the cultivation concept and the patterns of water utilization. Therefore, the obtained results are useful and the positive effects for farmers to apply the proper instrument and agricultural map in planning for the water utilization and adaptation the crop cultivation patterns under an expected amount of the water supply, changing each year timely.

The results and the outcomes from this project are the instruments, given to the Royal Irrigation Department to do the water management in Chao Phraya River Basin where is a vital river basin in this sub-region and occupies the catchment area of total precipitation of 144,494 square kilometers, covering the north region till the Gulf of Thailand. It is upper-medal-end water resource for the crop cultivation, livestock, and fisheries. Throughout three years of this research, 27 irrigation projects used NARK4.0, testing in 2016, when having the critical drought phenomenon. Not only does it provide positive results for program development, but also it indicates that the program can help decide in a timely fashion integral water management to reduce flood destruction. Therefore, Thailand can alleviate crisis and create the strategies to cope with flood problems in advance. Ultimately, WaterSMART and iFarmer applications plan the water utilization for the crop cultivation, animal husbandry, aquaculture properly to restore a natural balance undone by the actions of mankind. Overall the generated knowledge leads to a firm foundation for education, and development in mechanism to cope with disasters and especially the water crisis that is now one of the major problems facing the planet.