HidroMap: A New Tool for Irrigation Monitoring and Management Using Free Satellite Imagery

Abstract

Proper control and planning of water resource use, especially in those catchments with large surface, climatic variability and intensive irrigation activity, is essential for a sustainable water management. Decision support systems based on useful tools involving main stakeholders and hydrological planning offices of the river basins play a key role. The free availability of Earth observation products with high temporal resolution, such as the European Sentinel-2B, has allowed us to combine remote sensing with cadastral and agronomic data. This paper introduces HidroMap to the scientific community, an open source tool as a geographic information system (GIS) organized in two different modules, desktop-GIS and web-GIS, with complementary functions and based on PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. Through an effective methodology HidroMap allows monitoring irrigation activity, managing unregulated irrigation, and optimizing available fluvial surveillance resources using satellite imagery. This is possible thanks to the automatic download, processing and storage of satellite products within field data provided by the River Surveillance Agency (RSA) and the Hydrological Planning Office (HPO). The tool was successfully validated in Duero Hydrographic Basin along the 2017 summer irrigation period. In conclusion, HidroMap comprised an important support tool for water management tasks and decision making tackled by Duero Hydrographic Confederation which can be adapted to any additional need and transferred to other river basin organizations.