Improving Water Allocation Using Multi-agent Negotiation Mechanisms

Abstract

This paper describes a multi-agent irrigation management system that can be used to distribute water efficiently among farmers in a community irrigation scheme during water scarcity. Each farm is represented as an agent that can calculate how much water is needed in the farm and hence estimate the marginal profit for the farm based on how much water is available. During water scarcity such as drought, some farmers would face water shortages and some would have excess water for irrigation. To ensure efficient water distribution, those farmers with excess water should share their water with other farmers needing water. In this study, we used the auction mechanism to distribute water efficiently among the farmers with the objective of maximizing the farmer’s expected utility (profit margin). Our preliminary experiments showed that water distribution using an auction mechanism yielded a higher profit margin for all farmers in a community irrigation scheme when compared to direct negotiation strategy with a fixed price.