Summary

Emilia-Romagna is a leading region in Italian agricultural production with more than 84 000 farms and about 1 million hectares invested. About 33% of the regional farms include irrigated land. In this context it became more and more important to use the water in a more efficient way.

IRRINET - IRRIFRAME was developed as an “expert system” combining information from different databases such as SIRIUS, SIGRIAN and WEB GIS. It processes meteorological, farm and GIS data and develops irrigation schedules that are available through different communication channels. Its main feature is the real-time irrigation scheduling, i.e. day-by-day information on how much and when to irrigate farm crops, etc.

Results

The service covers more than 40 000 farms which is almost 40 % of the irrigated area in the region.

In 2007-13 it resulted water savings of more than 50 millions m3 in the Emilia Romagna region.

In 2013, about 55 % of Italian irrigated land has been managed by IRRINET - IRRIFRAME saving about 100 million m3 per year.

In the first semester of 2014, 1 000 new users registered to the system.