Using artificial intelligence for the water-food-energy nexus management during drought in Sweden
Abstract
During the summer 2018, Sweden has experienced an unprecedented drought that has severely affected the agricultural, water, and energy sectors. During the period June-July, some regions had 80-100% percent less precipitation than normal year, resulting in the most serious drought in the past 50 years. The Swedish Government has presented a national crisis package valued at more than 1.2 billion SEK, primarily to cover the fodder shortage and other loss of income that farmers experienced due to the drought. 760 million SEK have been invested in 2019 to develop measures to alleviate the situation for the drought-affected agriculture and food industry. Compared to other south European countries where irrigation is a well-known practice, Swedish farmers generally lack adequate means and incentives to know crops' water use, actual irrigation applications, crops' yield response to different water management practices, and thus current on-farm water-efficiency levels.
By using the gridded climatic data generated from the mesoscale MESAN and STRÅNG models developed by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, we have developed a water-food-energy nexus model to quantify the effects of drought on the Swedish agricultural sector. The model uses genetic algorithm (GA) for the optimal allocation of natural resources (i.e., water, energy, and nutrients) and Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) networks for seasonal forecasts. Based on the developed model, we aim to build a pilot water-food-energy nexus irrigation management system for Sweden to provide near-real time information concerning agricultural water management, crop yield conditions, and natural resources allocation. The presented model can act as a demonstration for a future operational service, primarily for farmers interested in crop growing conditions and irrigation guidelines, but also for agencies related to energy and water management.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMPA23B1160C
- Keywords:
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- 0402 Agricultural systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0480 Remote sensing;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0495 Water/energy interactions;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1884 Water supply;
- HYDROLOGY