Lake Monitoring and Management System for Sustaining Minor Irrigation in Arid and Semi-Arid Environments

Overview

Mission Kakatiya is an initiative by the Telangana State Government to restore minor irrigation sources in the region. Around 85% of the cultivated area in Telangana is rain-fed, making minor irrigation sources such as lakes very crucial for promoting sustainable agriculture in the region. The Government of Telangana is working on restoring all lakes in the state for this vision in a phase-wise manner over a period of 5 years.

One of the most important components of this mission is the creation of a comprehensive database of all lakes and water bodies in the state, which numbers around 40,000 with a total land area of 112,077 sq. km. This requires both baseline data collated from existing sources and creating new data wherever required using state-of-the-art Geospatial technologies supplemented with field information.

Remote sensing and GIS technologies can enable up-to-date maintenance of lake information, besides providing planners and communities with other key information on surrounding land use, temporal changes due to climatic and anthropological reasons, and a sustainability assessment of these water bodies.

A comprehensive information system called Lake Monitoring and Management System (LMMS) was thus developed and deployed. The key focus is on capacity building to supplement mission-related activities by the Irrigation and Command Area Development Authority of the State Government. Some key components include lake geography, integration of hydrological structures and characteristics, domain-based Spatio-temporal analysis and a web-based data visualization and dissemination framework that enhances decentralized planning and governance models across administrative levels.

Vision:To enable a comprehensive Lake Monitoring and Management System aligned with the vision of restoring minor irrigation sources in the arid and semi-arid regions of Telangana, India.

Objectives

y To design and deploy a comprehensive spatial database for lakes based on a 3-Key model. y To develop a comprehensive GIS for sharing, publishing, and exchanging information in the department based on OGC standards y Providing a platform for information sharing with the larger public for community participation. y Building capacity in the irrigation department to handle and develop solutions with spatial databases and geospatial information.

Stakeholders Involved

y Funding agency: Irrigation and Command Area Development Authority y User group: Engineers of Minor Irrigation Department, Government of Telangana y Solution Design and Execution: IIIT Hyderabad in partnership with Kaiinos Geospatial Technologies y Solution maintenance: Kaiinos Geospatial Technologies; eGovernance Wing of Irrigation Department; and

State Data Center managed by Information Technology Electronics and Communication Department of

Government of Telangana.

Solution and Implementation

The project was executed in three phases.

Phase 1: A prototype design, development, and demonstration phase where a spatial database was created for one district. Both web-based and mobile application pilot testing was executed in the same district with the data created.

Phase 2: Deployment and scaling up of the Lake Information and Monitoring System to the full State. Feedback from Phase 1 was incorporated to improve the overall design, and ease of use, and initiate the Engineers’ training program for about 4000+ engineers of the department to adopt and use LMMS on a regular basis.

Phase 3: Operational mode, involving running and supporting the fully deployed system in an operational mode. Also train the e-Governance Wing on Geospatial technologies and platform management, so that they can own and maintain it. Finally, the LMMS spatial database, web dashboard and mobile app-based monitoring system were all deployed at State Data Centre.

Table 1: Timeline of Different Phases of Project Implementation

Phase Months 4 8

Prototyping Phase Lake Information and Monitoring Solution Deployment 12 16