Opportunities and requirements for implementing an irrigation monitoring and management platform in Costa Rica

Concerns about deficient climate resilience of current irrigated agricultural production imply that the efficiency and effectiveness of irrigation systems should be increased. This short paper reports on the development of a web app for reporting failures of an irrigation system as well as web processing services for soil-crop water balance computations in Costa Rica. The effort provided a means for assessing GI educational and infrastructural requirements in Costa Rica. SENARA —the national service for groundwater, irrigation and drainage— aims to incorporate geo-spatial functionalities in a strategically important integrated water resource management system. Technical advancements and available free software solutions greatly facilitated the development of a prototype web app for an irrigation project “Llano Grande” that serves 121 farms. The used system design readily supports upscaling to other projects on a national scale. However, operationalization of an irrigation monitoring and management platform that includes the soil-crop water balance will require substantial progress concerning access to spatial data layers and meteorological data, the quality of spatial data layers and the technical and organizational geo-infrastructure. Furthermore, universities should accommodate programmes for training spatial data scientists and geo-informaticians that are needed to innovate and maintain such infrastructure.