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Effective irrigation management hinges upon effective collective action among farmers and irrigation managers. The purpose of this study is to examine how the institutional design of irrigation agency affects the incentives and ability of irrigation managers to do a conscientious job and to relate to farmers in managing irrigation, and hence affects irrigation performance.

This study compares the Department of Irrigation (DOI) in Nepal and the Irrigation Associations (IAs) in Taiwan. Based upon extensive fieldwork undertaken in the two countries, this study identifies the opportunities and constraints embedded in the institutional designs of the agencies, and analyzes their effects on the behavior of irrigation managers.

The two irrigation agencies are designed upon very different conceptions of how the provision and production of irrigation can be organized. The DOI is built upon the premises of top‐down control, a reliance on technical knowledge, professional management, and uniform rules and regulations. The IAs, on the other hand, are designed upon the premises of reciprocity among irrigation managers, complementarity between the agency and farmers' efforts, the importance of mobilizing local knowledge and resources, the embeddedness of the agency in local communities, and a problem‐solving orientation.

Irrigation institutions that enable farmers and irrigation managers to cope with the problematics involved in the provision and production of irrigation operation and maintenance (O&M) are better able to nurture and sustain synergistic and productive working relationships.

The findings of this study can inform policy reform in the irrigation sector in specific, and in resource management and development administration in general.

This study provides not only a theoretical perspective for understanding and comparing institutions, but also empirical evidence for understanding how institutions affect irrigation performance.

Israel, located in the sub‐tropical zone, is a very small country, measuring about 300 miles in length and averaging about 35 miles in width. Its rainy season only lasts for about three and a half months, with hardly any rainfall in the southern area. Irrigation, consequently, is almost entirely dependent on extensive water works. At present, the main source of water is from deep wells, of which there are some 4,000. Until recently, regional water works also drew their supply exclusively from such wells. In July of 1955, however, a water project, utilising as its source the Yarkon River, was inaugurated as the first link in a national water works. Steel so far employed in water works and irrigation networks amounts to approximately 500,000 tons, with an ever‐increasing rate of expansion.

Zimbabwe is a small developing country that has been independent for 17 years. In its short post‐colonial history it has been attempting to grapple with lessening the imbalances on resource distribution, like land, water and other natural resources, from its colonial path. The path towards achieving “growth and equity” in the economy has not been easy. It has moved from a centrist approach to one that is governed by market forces ushered in by economic reforms that encourage deregulation of state controls. Water pricing policy and distribution are reviewed, in the light of this background. Some key issues relating to institutions, legislation, and economic theory considerations in the management of scarce water resources are discussed in the light of Zimbabwe’s experience.

Past studies highlight a wide range of labour-related problems resulting in productivity loss in the construction industry of many developing countries. This study aims to quantify the impacts of labour-related factors on the productivity of construction operations in Sri Lankan building projects based on the viewpoint of engineers and construction managers for upgrading management/organisational policies and practices.

Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to identify the critical factors. Further, a series of industry consultative discussions were conducted through problem-based communication approaches to analyse the actions required.

A total of 21 factors were determined as critical, where skills shortage, labourers’ thinking abilities, work experience, knowledge in construction works and discipline were leading in the list. The statistical tests and the experts’ discussion outcomes ensured the validity and reliability of the study findings.

The study outcomes will contribute to finding out better ways for directing labour in the industry practices and revising organisational policies towards achieving higher productivity levels in construction operations. Though the study findings are limited to the Sri Lankan context, some findings may be tested in other developing countries in similar scenarios.

The study findings show why the identified factors are critical, how those influence construction practices and what actions need to be considered for addressing the industry’s productivity-related challenges. These can play a key role in upgrading the construction management practices and organisational policies to the near-future stages.

To run a job guarantee public policy scheme, it is important to know the aspiration level or the reference point of labor, and accordingly, the labor hour and the wage sequence are to be prepared. The existing job guarantee schemes consider the same wage rates for all types of jobs. As a result, it is to identify the reference point. The present work aims to propose a job guarantee scheme where different types of jobs have different wage rates. The paper explains the choice problem between labor and leisure at different wage rates and proposes complete computational tools to be incorporated into the job guarantee schemes. The paper also gives a mechanism to prepare the list of jobs and corresponding wage rates by maintaining a balance between labor and leisure, where productive activities measure labor hours and labor welfare measures leisure hours. Lastly, the paper provides the analytical tools to interpret the ex-post data of the job guarantee public policy schemes.

The paper has been written based on the Coordination Game and its Welfare Implications in the job guarantee public policy schemes.

The present paper gives an initial work to measure the choice between labor and leisure for the different wage rates practically. This will help in getting the equilibrium strategies, namely, the combination of the labor hour and the wage rate between the policymaker and the labor. This method will help to implement the job guarantee schemes. For example, to run successfully the Basic Income policy, the basic income calculation should give due care; otherwise, there will be a downward trend in the basic income and the welfare of labor will be reduced, because the labor would have to supply excess labor to meet the target income.

This paper derives theories and explains how the equilibrium in this coordination game can be achieved. The paper explains how the policy of the job guarantee schemes can be practiced practically. In the MGNREGA scheme, the public institution declares different categories of jobs with different wage rates. The categories have been classified with respect to the hours required to complete the job. Therefore, the public institution declares different lists or a sequence of pairs of labor hours and wage rates. Moreover, the list is stochastic, because the list can be changed by the inclusion of an offer from the market as well. The labor has to select from the list. The challenge on the part of the public institution is to prepare the list in such a way so that the inclusion of the market offers will not distort the equilibrium of the coordination game. An important method has been proposed here to analyze the ex-post data of job offers so that the preparation of the future sequence of the job offers can be prepared with due care. One objective of the policymaker here is to make a list of job offers in such a way so that the labor supply will be converging to a point and that will not deviate if the wage rate increases further. This objective will make a balance of the distribution of funds between the existing registered labor and the new entrants into the job guarantee schemes.

The purpose of this work is to make an IoT-based low-cost and power-efficient portable system to control irrigation using a threshold value algorithm and to measure soil-irrigation-related parameters such as soil moisture, soil temperature, humidity and air temperature.

This paper presents a threshold value algorithm to optimize power consumption and to control irrigation process.

The system uses ESP-12F 8266 as the main microcontroller unit to monitor and control irrigation system. The system also consists of an actuator system that triggers automatically based on a threshold value algorithm. An open-source cloud platform is used to monitor and store all the data for future perspective. To make the system run for a long time without any human intervention, a solar panel is used as an alternate source of energy for charging the 12V lithium-ion battery. The battery takes 2.64 h for full charging considering peak intensity of sunlight. A capacitive moisture sensor is included using less expensive 555 timer and calibrated to measure water content in the soil. The 555 timer is used in astable mode of configuration to generate a signal of 572 KHz. The calibrated sensor data when compared with a standard SEN0193 moisture sensor shows an error of 3.4%. The prototype model is made to optimize the power consumption. This can be achieved by utilizing sleep mode of ESP-12F 8266. The total cost involved to make the system is 3900.55 Indian rupees and around US$54.90.

The device is tested in a flower garden during winter season of Nagaland, India, for 75 days to collect all the data and to automate the irrigation process.

The proposed threshold value algorithm optimizes the power consumption of the device, and wastage of water is reduced up to 60% as compared to the traditional method of irrigation.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the typology that links the characterization of the irrigated farms with their structural and functional aspects for the context of sustainable irrigated agricultural development.

East Mitidja scheme is selected for this study. About 134 farms are selected from the irrigation scheme. Multiple correspondence and ascendant hierarchical classification are used as data mining tools to characterize the typology of irrigated farms.

The typology provides a way of understanding the diversity of farms with regard to their socio‐economic environment. It also helps to identify those farms that fall into broad categories of unsustainability. The latest implemented agricultural and irrigation policy has a differential effect on various types of farmers, favoring some and discouraging others. The socio‐economic constraints have prevented the implementation of various development programs. This situation leads to the unsustainable exploitation of the water and land resources and to the promotion of unsustainable irrigation scheme.

The findings and results may help decision makers to implement appropriate interventions in terms of resources, conditions and interests that are compatible with each identified class of farms.

This is one of the first studies to explore irrigated agriculture development issues in Algeria using multivariate methods. The typological method can help policymakers to identify priorities. It can also be used to predict how different farmers will likely respond to government programs and policies regarding irrigated agricultural development.

The purpose of this paper is to present a procedure to estimate the total irrigation water requirement for a command area of 2,500 hectares in an arid environment under various crops and soil types using GIS for data storage, analysis and visualization of results.

Bani Al‐Harith agricultural area in Sana'a basin, Yemen was chosen for the study. ArcView GIS was used to plan for suitable crops and estimate the irrigation water requirements based on the farmer's preference and soil types. Using the available soil maps, the soil characteristics such as salinity, texture and suitable crop types were overlaid to produce the crop blocks map. The water balance equation was used to produce the crop water requirement map considering the crop coefficient for different crop stages. The total water demand for each irrigation block was calculated by summing the three components, namely percolation loss through the soil, maximum evapotranspiration of the crop and leaching requirement (LR) to maintain an acceptable salinity level.

The case study is an example of using GIS as an effective tool in irrigation planning. GIS facilities to acquire, store, analyze and display spatial data were used to produce the soil class map, soil profile map, crop map and water requirement map. The profile EC_e values for the chosen crops is within the crop salinity tolerance for 100 percent yield except for blocks 4 and 5 where grape and coffee respectively are suggested to be grown. The profile EC_e values are 18.37 dS/m in block 4 and 3.27 to 7.88 dS/m in block 5. The tolerance threshold of 100 percent yield for grape is 1.5 dS/m and for coffee is 3 to 6 dS/m. The salinity of the irrigation water was 2.08 dS/m. From the crop blocks map, the salinity tolerance level for 100 percent yield of onion for block 1 is 1.2 dS/m, tomato for block 2 is 2.5 dS/m, alfalfa for block 3 is 2 dS/m, grape for block 4 is 1.5/ dS/m, and the salinity tolerance level for 100 percent yield of coffee for block 5 is 5 dS/m. Leaching requirements were obtained by taking EC_w value of 2.08 and EC_e of 1.2, 2.5, 2, 1.5 and 5 for onion, tomato, alfalfa, grape and coffee respectively. The peak total water requirement occurred in May and was found to be 5,595 m³/ha, or 560 mm. The design irrigation water requirement for every block is shown in a map for easy visualization and manipulation to produce the best combination of soils, crops and water use.

This method of determining the total irrigation water requirement is dependent on the selected irrigation system and crops whether shallow‐rooted, deep‐rooted or tree crops. The use of water in agriculture should be judicious, precise and sustainable. Application of GIS can be a useful tool in irrigation management since it provides rapid access to underlying information of crop suitability. The designer can try out various combinations of crops, to suit the soils and available water.

This methodology is useful for training irrigation engineers and water resource planners on the use of GIS technique to plan irrigation projects in arid areas.

This technique has never been applied to the study area.

This chapter presents the Smart Irrigation system using the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT Technology is a network of physical objects that are connected with sensors, software, etc. This chapter concludes the project based on the agriculture field that automates the irrigation process and on the agriculture field that automates the irrigation process and solves the challenge of water consumption in those areas. We have developed the system using different sensors like (1) Soil Moisture sensor, which measures the moisture present in the soil, (2) Humidity and Temperature Sensor (DHT11), which traces the temperature change. All these sensors are connected to the Node MCU ESP8266 microcontroller, which is also a Wi-Fi module. It uploads the data to the cloud and displays it in the form of readings detected by the Blynk Application. This sensor's reading values control the pump for emergency purposes, such as stopping the pump for irrigation. Thus, this project can automate the irrigation process by analyzing soil moisture and climatic conditions, covering essential aspects like less labor, power consumption, reliability, and cost.

Accelerating the influences of external stakeholders in any construction project is inevitable. Studies on external stakeholder influence on construction projects and literature on external stakeholder management in irrigation infrastructure projects executed with donor funds are scarce. Thus, this study aimed to investigate how to manage the external stakeholders' influence on donor-funded irrigation infrastructure projects effectively.

A mixed approach consisting of 17 semi-structured interviews and two rounds of questionnaire surveys was adopted to rank the following: the types of external stakeholders who can significantly influence irrigation infrastructure projects, significant influencing strategies used by those stakeholders, and significant strategies that can be adopted to manage external stakeholder influence on the projects.

In total, 12 of external stakeholders who can significantly influence irrigation infrastructure projects were identified; 17 significant influencing strategies used by external project stakeholders and 22 significant strategies used to manage external stakeholder influence on the projects were identified. The influencing/management strategies specific to each external stakeholder type and those that are common to all external stakeholder types were identified separately. The grievance redress mechanism should be activated for managing external stakeholder influence on donor-funded irrigation infrastructure projects.

This study contributes to theory by identifying significant strategies that can be used to manage external stakeholder influence on donor-funded irrigation infrastructure projects during the planning and design stages. The study will help project teams to handle external stakeholder influence on the projects successfully, accomplish project objectives, and make maximum utilization of the donor funds received.