Rubicon Water, together with its research partner the University of Melbourne, has been awarded a grant to assist in the ongoing development of Network Control and ensure it stays at the forefront globally.
The Australian Research Council (ARC) Grant will fund a team of 10 University of Melbourne researchers over three years. The team will work closely with Rubicon’s control engineers to further develop its Network Control solution.
ARC is Australia’s primary agency for R&D investment and supports only the highest-quality fundamental and applied research that advances Australian innovation globally and benefits the community.
The work will focus on developing and testing Model Predictive Control, a relatively new control technique that will be incorporated into NeuroFlo® software. It will enhance the ability of Network Control to respond optimally to changes in demand while maintaining extremely stable canal levels.
Sumith Choy, Rubicon’s Control Engineering Manager said, “This ability is the key to highly efficient water distribution in a network of open canals, especially for agriculture, which uses approximately 70% of fresh water globally.”
Additionally, the team will apply game theory principles to the scheduling of water delivery requests. This will eventually enable Confluent software to schedule deliveries in a way that automatically maximizes the productive output of an irrigation district’s water.
Network Control solutions have been implemented for irrigation districts in Australia, China and the USA.
