What exactly does WaterWise do?

WaterWise is a web application designed to help farmers optimize their weekly irrigation schedules and water usage. It prompts farmers to map out their fields and enter specific information so we can generate a sustainable and efficient irrigation schedule tailored for them. WaterWise also features an AI chatbot, Sprout AI, to help answer the farmers' questions about their farm, powered by OpenAI's GPT 3.5 Turbo.

WaterWise packages essential data in a way that’s visually intuitive, focusing on actions rather than raw numbers. Farmers can easily see what needs to be done and focus on tasks like adjusting irrigation, rather than being bogged down by overwhelming statistics.

How does WaterWise work?

WaterWise is designed to present critical information in a clear, action-oriented manner, empowering farmers to take swift, informed action to manage water resources effectively.

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Upon opening WaterWise, the dashboard first offers a real-time snapshot of farm conditions, helping farmers make informed irrigation decisions quickly. Farmers can monitor crop distribution, and key weather metrics like current soil moisture levels, precipitation, and wind speed. An interactive field map visually represents the fields showing the hydration status of each field with simple labels like “Hydrated” or “Dehydrated”. This will help farmers quickly understand what needs attention without digging through complex numbers or satellite data.

Fields page

The “My Fields” section provides a clear and concise overview of each field’s hydration status, daily water usage, and irrigation time required. Farmers can easily track Hydration Jobs, which highlight completed, active, and pending tasks, helping them prioritize irrigation efforts.

By focusing on which fields need immediate attention, WaterWise enables farmers to manage irrigation more efficiently, ultimately saving water and reducing costs.

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To add new fields, WaterWise prompts the user to enter the field's coordinates to navigate to it on a map, specify crop type, growth stage (seedling, adult, elderly), and the efficiency of the irrigation system.

upload_image.01:48:28.733169 After the user inputs all the needed information, they can simply map out the field on the map. WaterWise then gathers the evapotranspiration information of the field and uses it to calculate how much water is needed to have a successful week of irrigation.

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The user is provided with a proposed irrigation schedule, detailing how much water is required for each of the next 7 days along with details regarding when the irrigation should be run. The daily water usage is calculated using evapotranspiration data sourced from OpenET, precipitation data from Open-Meteo, and an index of crop coefficients. The crop coefficient is an important value that is used with the reference evapotranspiration to find the water needs of a certain plant at a specific growth stage.

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The first step is calculating the area in square meters given a series of coordinates representing the vertices of the specified polygon of the farm. We use the Shoelace theorem to calculate the area along with trigonometric identities to account for the curvature of the Earth.

Once this is done, we can calculate the water usage with the following formula:

Water Usage (gallons) = (cropCoefficient x ET - precipitation) x area.

Finally, using the total water requirement along with the flow rate of the irrigation system, we divided the water required by the flow rate to determine the number of hours the irrigation system must run. In the interface, it’s specified that the irrigation system is expected to be turned on at 10 PM as irrigation overnight is more environmentally friendly, due to less water being lost through evaporation.

What does WaterWise hope to achieve?

The goal of this project is to develop an intuitive and efficient app that helps farmers optimize plant irrigation by scheduling watering cycles, ensuring healthier crops while saving water and promoting sustainable farming practices. WaterWise uses a variety of variables such as evapotranspiration data, precipitation data, and crop coefficients to provide customized irrigation scheduling.

Additionally, SproutAI is a powerful AI tool that helps the farmers answer any uncertainties they might have about their fields and provides them with personalized insights into the health of their farm.

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What tools did you use to develop your project?

We used a variety of tools to realize our project (and a passion for saving water!).

Development Tools: Github, Visual Studio Code, Figma
Languages: Typescript, Python, HTML, CSS
Frameworks: Next.js
Infrastructure: Vercel
APIs: Leaflet, Openstreet, OpenET, Open-Meteo, OpenAI

Future Goals

There are multiple areas for future development of WaterWise.

Factoring in more data sources for a more accurate estimation of water requirements
Fine-tune the LLM to provide more specialized feedback pertaining to agriculture
Developing a database that persists fields and crops for farmers to check on
Providing notifications for irrigation
Integrating a mobile app to allow farmers to check in on their farms on the go

View Our Repository

Github Repository

View Our Figma Prototype

Figma Prototype

2024 NASA Space Apps Challenge

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