Water Resources Management

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-019-02229-4

Multi-Objective Planning for Conjunctive Use

of Surface and Ground Water Resources Using
Genetic Programming

Reza Sepahvand 1 & Hamid R. Safavi 1 & Farshad Rezaei 1

Received: 26 September 2017 / Accepted: 8 March 2019/

# Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Abstract
In arid and semi-arid regions, climate change causes a drastic decline in the volume of water
resources as water demands increase. Thus, the present study is aimed at using a simulation-
optimization model to perform conjunctive management of surface-ground water use to
achieve two main objectives: (1) minimizing shortages in meeting irrigation water demands
and (2) maximizing the total agricultural net benefit for the main crops of an agricultural sector.
To meet these main goals, first, the genetic programming (GP) method is used to simulate
surface water-groundwater interactions. Then, the simulation model is linked to a multi-
objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) as the optimization model, yielding a simulation-
optimization model. In order to investigate the impact of different climatic conditions on the
optimized surface and ground water allocation and propose an optimal crop pattern for each
climatic period, three planning periods (wet, normal and dry) were addressed in modeling the
conjunctive water use management problem. Finally, the economic results of this study
suggested a maximum increase in the net benefit by 38.19%, 59.37% and 45%, as compared
to those obtained in the actual operation in wet, normal and dry years, respectively, for one
study sub-area. The net benefit was also increased by at most 84.79%, 83.3% and 120.77% in
wet, normal and dry years, respectively, for another study sub-area, demonstrating the com-
petence of the optimal conjunctive use model to enhance net benefits with the least negative
socio-environmental impacts resulting from any development and management scheme in the
field of water resources.

Keywords Conjunctive use . Multi-crop pattern planning . Simulation-optimization . Multi-

objective optimization . Genetic programming . Compromise programming

* Hamid R. Safavi
hasafavi@cc.iut.ac.ir

Reza Sepahvand
rezaa_sepahvand@yahoo.com
Farshad Rezaei
farshad.rezaei@gmail.com
 Sepahvand R. et al.

1 Introduction

In recent decades, the increasing population growth and its consequent increase in water
demands in all sectors (domestic, industrial, and agricultural) have caused many problems to
properly supply the water demands. These problems are getting more crucial as knowing the
climate change is also causing drastic decline in the surface and ground water resources
available to use. Hence, the conjunctive surface-ground water use management for optimal
water allocation is considered more crucial than ever. Conjunctive management is one of the
practical mechanisms that has been proven to be effective in minimizing water shortages,
temporary fluctuations, improper spatial and temporal distribution of water resources and also
reducing the cost of water-supply projects in every region, especially in arid and semi-arid
regions (Singh 2014). In this approach, both water resources can be optimally used at the same
time, water resources are of the least quantitative or qualitative losses, water demands can be
sustainably met, water supply fluctuations are minimized and thus, the supply and demands are
much more adapted with each other in each operation period (Harmancioglu et al. 2013).
Development of a suitable conjunctive surface and ground water use management model
requires collection of detailed information about the hydraulic and hydrologic parameters
affecting the surface water volume fluctuations and groundwater level variations, and also
identification of the major water resources and demands existing in the study area. In
conjunctive use, a simulation-optimization model must be used to simulate the interaction
between groundwater and surface water resources in order to obtain the aquifer response to
different water use policies to help take the best water use policy considering the hydrological
and managerial conditions in the region (Barlow et al. 2003). Due to necessity of successively
calling the simulation model in the simulation-optimization model to determine the state
variables corresponding to the decision variables generated by the optimization sector of the
model, the linked simulation-optimization structure may be computationally expensive (Safavi
et al. 2010). Hence, due to increasing number of hydrological and meteorological recorded
data, the necessity to incorporate all parameters affecting the model results such as the decision
and state variables and finally, due to the need for multi-objective modeling contributing to
increase of time and space complexity of the management model, the two simulation and
optimization models are required to be properly linked. The physical-based simulators employ
the classical equations associated with the interaction between surface water and groundwater
to predict groundwater level and could negatively affect the prediction process due to their
imprecise parameter tuning procedure. Thus, these simulators are considered inappropriate
tools with high computational cost and memory requirements, especially when being linked to
complex and multi-objective optimization models (Safavi et al. 2010). According to all
shortcomings of the physical-based simulators, the regression and data-based simulation
models such as artificial neural network (ANN), support vector machines (SVMs), relevance
vector machines (RVMs) and genetic programming (GP) seem to be much more efficient
models showing more reasonable and acceptable performance, as they cover all of the
drawbacks listed for the physical-based models and are also able of accurately determining
the relationship between inputs and outputs without any need to employ and utilize the
equations of groundwater flow. Furthermore, these models are not required to accurate
hydraulic and hydrologic parameters tuning as a result of not using the real flow equations
in their structure. In the recent years, the simulation–optimization models have been used is
some researches to develop conjunctive use management models (Singh 2014). A number of
these researches can be found in (Matsukawa et al. 1992; Bhattacharjya and Datta 2005; Yang
Multi-Objective Planning for Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water...

et al. 2009; Shi et al. 2012; Tabari 2015a, 2015b; Tabari and Yazdi 2014; and Mani et al.
2016). In the past two years, there are some other works in the literature carried out in the arid
and semi-arid areas of the world to address uncertainty in the models’ parameters and data,
multi-objective nature of the models or a combination of both. These researches are listed in
Table 1.
The present study is aimed at using the simulation-optimization model to deal with a
surface water and groundwater conjunctive use management problem. The simulation portion
is a genetic programming model and the optimization section is a multi-objective genetic
algorithm. Genetic programming was first introduced by Koza in 1994 as a computing method
automatically determining the best solution for a specific problem (Koza 1994). This method
has not been extensively used in groundwater simulation and conjunctive management;
however, some applications of this method are as follows: Jyothiprakash and Magar (2012)
used artificial neural network, the neural-fuzzy model and fixed length gene genetic program-
ming to implement a comparative study on the simulation models to predict the current inflow
into a tank. Fallah-Mehdipour et al. (2014) used genetic programming to estimate the
groundwater level in an aquifer.

Table 1 selected recently published conjunctive use optimization models in different arid and semi-arid regions

Authors Country Summary of the research

Srivastava and India The authors utilized a fuzzy multi-objective goal programming methodology to
Singh (2017) optimize cropping patterns in a canal command area in India, regarding a
number of qualitative and quantitative purposes.
Zhang et al. (2017) China The authors developed a two-stage stochastic chance-constrained fractional
programming model to address the agricultural cultivated area in a region in
northwest of China. The model could hold a balance between net benefit and
the cropping area to enhance the land use efficiency and discuss trade-offs
among efficiency, constraint violations and policy scenarios.
Sun et al. (2017) China The authors employed a multi-objective model to optimize the cropping pattern
in a district located in southwest of China. They considered three main goals
of maximizing net benefit, minimizing agricultural drought degree for each
crop and minimizing the deficit in supplying the water demands by surface
water resources to decrease groundwater extraction in the region.
Xie et al. (2018) China The authors proposed an inexact stochastic-fuzzy programming model for
optimizing water resources allocation and cropping pattern under uncertainty
in a city in China. The optimization framework included a number of
uncertainties such as interval values, fuzzy sets, random variables, and their
combinations. Furthermore, a number of scenarios were considered to ad-
dress different fuzzy probability of violating constraint (tolerance levels). It
was concluded that different tolerance levels correspond to different water
allocation volumes and cropping patterns, leading to water resources system
benefits and system failure risk.
Milan et al. (2018) Iran The authors utilized a simulation-optimization model in which a linear fuzzy
optimization model plays the role of optimizer and the MODFLOW was used
as the simulator of the groundwater withdrawal. Then, a fuzzy inference
system was developed to predict the optimal groundwater extraction under
uncertainty based on the optimal results obtained by the
simulation-optimization model.
Yousefi et al. (2018) Iran The authors conducted a conjunctive treated wastewater and groundwater use
management to achieve three main goals: maximizing net benefit,
minimizing nitrogen leaching and maximizing groundwater recharge. They
applied particle swarm optimization (PSO) with an additive weighting
method and multi-objective PSO (MOPSO) to solve the optimization model
and then compared them.
 Sepahvand R. et al.

Cobaner et al. (2016) used multi-layer perceptron, radial basis neural network, multi-gene
genetic programming and multi-linear and multi-nonlinear regression models to obtain the
relationship among the water level in the Florida Lake, the water level in the aquifer,
precipitation level and evaporation level. Different researchers have also used the multi-
objective optimization methods to model the conjunctive use problems (Bazargan-Lari et al.
2009; Rafipour et al. 2014; Mirajkar and Patel 2016; Rezaei et al. 2017a, 2017b; Li et al.
2018).
In this paper, first, the genetic programming is used to simulate the groundwater level
variations. Since the optimization model is of multi-objective nature, a bi-objective non-
dominated sorting genetic algorithm- Type II (NSGA-II) was used to develop the optimization
model, consisting of two major objectives (1) minimizing water deficits and (2) maximizing
the agricultural net benefit. This paper applies some improvements related to the field of
conjunctive water use as its main innovations as follows: (1) as mentioned in the literature, the
genetic programming method has already been applied to handle some water resources
management problems; however, the application of genetic programming simulator in the
field of conjunctive water use management is a new application of this method, focused in this
paper. This method has an edge to some other simulation models such as artificial neural
networks, suggesting this method to be more precise than other simulators to be linked to the
optimization model and also could mitigate the computational burden of the simulation-
optimization models; (2) furthermore, there are three climatic scenarios considered in this
paper to better evaluate the potential of an optimal conjunctive water use model to manage the
extreme and normal climates; (3) this paper also proposes an optimal crop pattern upon which,
the water consumption is reduced, the water demand percentage met is increased and thus, the
net benefit is fulfilled as much as possible; (4) the model also makes the conjunctive water use
have the least impact on the environment to keep sustainability of water resources utilization at
the future. Hence, the proposed conjunctive use model is to satisfy all socio-economic-
environmental goals being concerned in any development and management scheme related
to water resources uses.
The organization of the paper is as follows: the Section 2 introduces the study area. The
Section 3 is dedicated to explain the methodology, especially the simulation model utilized in
this paper as a part of the conjunctive use management model. The Section 4 presents the
management model, The Section 5 presents the results of the study and the Section 6
concludes the paper and provides some illustrating descriptions on the results of this study.

2 Study Area

According to Iran hydrological classification, the Gavkhouni river basin covering an area of
41,547 Km2 is located at the Central Plateau river basin in Iran. The basin is including 21 sub-
basins. Due to coverage of the largest volume of available water resources and the massive
agricultural and horticultural production, Najafabad sub-basin is identified as the most impor-
tant sub-basin of the Gavkhouni basin, such that 584 thousand tons of agricultural products
and 45.8 thousand tons of horticultural products are annually produced in this sub-basin. In
this study area 93.3%, 4.5% and 2.2% of water resources are used for agricultural, domestic
and industrial purposes, respectively. Thus, it can be concluded that the water and lands in this
area are mostly used for agricultural purposes. The study area covers a major alluvial plain
(989.5 Km2) that is an unconfined aquifer with an area of 950 Km2. This sub-basin includes
Multi-Objective Planning for Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water...

about 14,000 wells and 115 Qanats annually extracting about 857 and 22 million cubic meters
(MCM) of the groundwater resources, respectively. Investigation of the recharge and discharge
volumes of the Najafabad aquifer over 15 years revealed that the mean groundwater level has
been withdrawn by 8 m and this shows the necessity of employing a conjunctive water use
model in the study area and optimizing this model to hinder further groundwater drawdown
and mitigate the acute declines in this vital source of water. Figure 1 shows the location of
Najafabad sub-basin in the Gavkhouni river basin as well as the location of Gavkhouni basin in
Iran. In the present study, the simulation was carried out for only right and left regions of
Nekouabad irrigation canals where the amount of groundwater extraction and surface water
allocation are of the largest amounts in the study area, highly affecting groundwater level
variations. In this study, three scenarios representing three different climatic conditions are
aimed to optimize the conjunctive water use management model. For this purpose, the 2010–
2011, 2004–2005, and 2006–2007 water years were chosen as a suitable indicator of the dry,
normal and wet water years in the study area, respectively.

3 Methodology

3.1 Simulation Model

Genetic programming has many similarities to the genetic optimization algorithm, except that
in the genetic algorithm, optimization and modifications are applied to the numerical lines;
while in the genetic programming, we deal with tree structures that are formed of a combina-
tion of random numbers, functions, mathematical terminals and input parameters. In this
method, the structure of this tree is updated until the stopping criterion is met. In genetic
programming, the objective function is the minimization of RMSE calculated for the generated
equations producing errors between each output and target defined for all input data imposed
on the tree. The main goal of the genetic programming is to find the best equation indicating
the relationship between the input and output data much clearly and interpretably than other
relationships (Koza 1994). Figure 2 shows the simplified algorithm of the genetic program-
ming performance.

3.1.1 Preparation of the Simulation Model

In the present study, the final goal of developing a simulation model is to obtain monthly
groundwater level in Left and Right regions of Nekouabad under different water use scenarios.

Isfahan province
Najafabad

Gavkhouni river
basin
Isfahan city

Fig. 1 The location of Najafabad sub-basin and Gavkhoni river basin in Ir

 Sepahvand R. et al.

Create Initial Population

Generation = 1

Evaluate Solution with

New Population
Fitness Function

Maximum Number of Generations Yes

Generation = Generation + 1 is reached? or Proposed Fitness Terminate Program
Value is Gained?

No
Apply Operators Return to the Best
Structure

Crossover
Mutation
Reproduction

Fig. 2 The algorithm of genetic programming

In this paper, the inputs inserted into the simulation model are including: groundwater
extraction with no lag and one lag, surface water allocation by Nekouabad irrigation networks
with no lag and one and two lags, precipitation with no lag and one and two lags, average
monthly temperature with no lag and one and two lags, difference in water inflow and outflow
in the river (hydrometric difference) with no lag and one lag, the average groundwater level at
the end of the previous time step and the average groundwater level in adjacent regions at the
end of the previous time step. Finally, the model’s output is the average groundwater level in
each area at the end of the current time step. Totally, 15 inputs and one output are considered
for the simulation model in the Right and Left regions of Nekouabad.
The statistical data of 23 water years (1991–2013 excluding the 2008–2009 water year)
are used in the present study from which 52% were inserted into the simulation model in
the training process and the rest 48% were assigned to the test process. Since alternative
simulation models such as genetic programming use interpolation techniques to generalize
their simulation to every data with a specific and unknown condition and calculate output
for that data, the data assigned to each process (training and test) should all be within wet,
normal and dry conditions. Final validation is also performed in prediction phase to further
measure the performance of the model. In the present study, prediction means that the
simulation model should be able to use the groundwater level estimated by the model at
time step (t-1) (rather than the observed level at time step (t-1)) as an input, and have a
very close output to the observed output at the end of the time step t and eventually at the
end of the water year. The final validation is necessary because the network is sometimes
accepted regarding error estimation criteria, but shows a poor performance in the predic-
tion process of the consecutive time steps, mainly because of the effect of accumulation of
the errors generated by the simulation model in a streak of the simulations and predictions
to simulate the whole given planning period. It is worth mentioning that the final
validation process was carried out over the 2008–2009 water year. Furthermore, the main
training and test process of the genetic programming model was performed over the 1991–
2013 long-term period, excluding the 2008–2009 water year, which is put aside to perform
the final validation.
Multi-Objective Planning for Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water...

Running the genetic programming model for several times, the depth of the trees and the
number of branches to be connected to each node was obtained equal to 2 and 2, respectively.
The model was run 9 times for 1000 iterations. In the Left and Right regions, the RMSE value
remains unchanged after 450 iterations passed, therefore the optimal iterations for simulations
in both Left and Right regions are considered equal to 450. It should be noted that in each
generation, simulation is performed with 150 trees.

3.1.2 Simulation Model Results

In order to be assured of reaching the highest accuracy of the selected structure of the genetic
programming method during simulation, the error criteria for the selected structure of the
genetic programming method and the selected structure of artificial neural network were
compared in Table 2. According to the table, in almost all performance criteria evaluated in
the training and test processes, the selected structure of the genetic programming outperforms
the selected structure of the artificial neural network, indicating the superiority and high
accuracy of the genetic programming approach in simulation.

3.2 Optimization Model

The NSGA-II, first proposed by Deb et al. (2002), is employed as the optimization sector of
the management model. This algorithm is an elitist MOGA, in which the previous generation
is merged to the updated generation to produce the next generation. Then, the non-dominated
sorting operator and crowding distance operator are employed to divide the merged genera-
tions to a single one as the next generation of solutions and this process is going on until the
algorithm converges to the optimal Pareto-front.

4 Developing the Simulation-Optimization Management Model

After developing the simulation model by the genetic programming, the optimization model is
to be developed and linked to the simulator in order to obtain a conjunctive use management
model. In order to divide the water years (23 years) into dry, normal and wet periods, the
average temperature, precipitation, evaporation and the surface water available in any water
year were compared to their averaged corresponding values over a long-term period. The
comparison revealed that the long-term 23 years-statistical period include 9 dry years, 9
normal years and 5 wet years. Then, one water year in each condition was considered as the
representative of that condition to be taken into account as a planning period. As mentioned

Table 2 Comparison of the genetic programming and artificial neural network for both regions

Method Criterion RMSE MSE R2

Region Train Test Train Test Train Test

GP Left 0.65 1.01 0.433 1.02 0.999 0.997

Right 0.61 0.89 0.379 0.807 0.999 0.995
ANN Left 0.578 1.31 0.575 1.71 0.998 0.996
Right 0.64 1.17 0.41 1.37 0.998 0.992
 Sepahvand R. et al.

before, the objective functions considered to optimize conjunctive water use management are
including (1) minimization of water deficit and (2) maximization of the net benefit. The
objectives can be mathematically formulated as follows:
 
Demand ki −Supplyki 2
Minimize Z 1 ¼ ∑k¼1 ∑i¼1
2 12
ð1Þ
Demand ki

Maximize Z 2 ¼ ∑2k¼1 ∑TC

c¼1 Akc ðY c Pc −Cpc Þ ð2Þ

In the present study, some constraints are also to be met as follows:

Supplyk;i ¼ a*Gki þ a*b*c*S ki ð3Þ

Gki ≤Gmax;k i ¼ 1; 2; …; 12 and k ¼ 1; 2 ð4Þ

S ki ≤S max;k;i i ¼ 1; 2; …; 12 and k ¼ 1; 2 ð5Þ

i¼1 S ki ≤S max;k
∑12 ; k ¼ 1; 2 ð6Þ

Lki ≥1:5 ; i ¼ 1; 2; …; 12; k ¼ 1; 2 ð7Þ

i¼1 ΔLki ≤ΔLmax;k ¼ Lmax;k −Linitial;k ; k ¼ 1; 2

∑12 ð8Þ

c¼1 ∑c¼1 Akc ≤Pok *CCAk

∑TC TC
; ∀c; k ð9Þ

∑TC
c¼1 Akc *E ðGIRic Þ ≤ ðS ki þ Gki Þ ; ∀i; k ð10Þ

Akc ≤αkc ∀c; k ð11Þ

Akc ≥β kc ∀c; k ð12Þ

Akc ≥ 0; ∀c; k ð13Þ

S ki ≥0; ∀i; k ð14Þ

Multi-Objective Planning for Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water...

Gki ≥0; ∀i; k ð15Þ

  
Yc Supplyki
¼ ∏12
i¼1 1−K y ic 1− ð16Þ
Y c;max Demand ki

These parameters are defined below:

i counter of the month.

k counter of the region.
C counter of the crops.
Demandki water demand in region k and month i.
Supplyki total water allocated by the conjunctive use model to region k at month i.
a efficiency coefficient of water use, due to water losses such as evaporation and
infiltration to the aquifer, across the farm.
b efficiency coefficient of water transfer through the main canal.
c water distribution efficiency in the secondary canals.
TC total number of crops.
Akc area allocated to crop c in the region k in ha.
Yc the yield of crop c (kg/ha).
Pc price of the crop c in Rial/Kg, (1 USD = 78,320 Iranian Rials)
Cpc the production cost of the crop c in Rial/ha.
Gki groundwater extracted in region k in month i.
Ski surface water allocated to region k in month i.
Smax,k,i maximum allowable surface water allocation in region k in month i.
Smax,k, maximum allowable surface water allocation in region k over the whole planning
period. It is worth mentioning that Smax,k is reasonably less than the summation of
all Smax,k,i values over a year, so as to hinder the management model to assign
maximum allowable surface water to each time step in each region.
Gmax,k This limit for the left and right region is set to 97 (MCM) and 40 (MCM),
respectively.
Lki groundwater depth at month i in region k.
?Lki groundwater level variation in month i against that in month i-1 in region k.
?Lmax,k minimum 4 and 6 m rise in the groundwater level for wet climate, 0 and 1 m rise
for normal climate, and maximum 2 and 4 m drawdown in the groundwater level
for dry climate.
CCAk total cultivated area in region k.
Pok ratio of the area for the major crops to the total area in Left and Right regions.
GIRic net water demand of crop c in month i (m3/ha).
E(GIRic) gross water demand of crop c in month i (m3/ha).
Yc yield of crop c (kg/ha).
Yc, max Maximum yield of crop c achieved when crop water demand is fully met (kg/ha).
K yic Yield response factor of crop c in month i.
If any of the constraints other than the bound constraints directly imposed on the decision
variables, are not met by the model, the violations are penalized by multiplying the violation
 Sepahvand R. et al.

value by a significance coefficient, called penalty coefficient. These penalized violations are
then added and contributing to increase the minimization objectives or decrease the maximi-
zation ones. Here, the penalties are added to the first objective, as the optimization model is
actually a minimization one.
Z 1 ¼ Z 1 þ Vioi ð17Þ

Vioi ¼ ∑ðR*ΔÞk k ¼ the number of constraints ð18Þ

where, R is the penalty coefficient which is typically set to a very large positive number, and Δ
is the violation of the permissible limit of each constraint.
Finally, the compromise programming method is employed to select the best solution on the
optimal Pareto-front generated by the management model. The equation used to achieve the
compromise programming index is as follows:
  p  1p
Z ideal −Z i
L ¼ ∑i¼1
n i
ð19Þ
Z i −Z i
ideal anti−ideal

where, L is the compromise programming index, showing the weighted distance between
each point of the optimal Pareto-front to the ideal point. The less this distance, the better
the solution with the objectives Zi (here, i = 1, 2) will be. Wi is the weight of each
objective function, being considered equal for the objectives in this study, p is a constant
power imparting significance to the distances, being considered to be 2, Zi is the ith
objective value of each solution located on the optimal Pareto-front, Z ideal
i is the best ith
anti−ideal
objective value on the optimal Pareto front and Z i is the worst ith objective value
on the optimal Pareto-front.

5 Results and Discussion

5.1 Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water During the Dry Year

The 2010–2011 water year was considered as the indicator for the dry condition. The
model has failed to completely meet the water demand for the optimal crop pattern in the
right region, especially in summer months, mainly due to imposing constraint on the
groundwater level drawdown which in turn, restrict groundwater extraction in these
months. Figures 3 and 4 show optimum crop pattern in this planning year in two
scenarios: in view of and regardless of the minimum and maximum area to be allocated
to each crop in the Right and Left regions, as compared to the actual crop pattern during
this planning year.
The total net benefit generated by the management model was obtained for the
Right region as 783.685 and 793.148 billion Rials and for the Left region as 1388.01
and 1997.7 billion Rials for considering the crop area bounds and not considering
crop area bounds, respectively, while the actual net benefit obtained by the farmers in
the Right region is 547.075 billion Rials and in the Left region is 904.872 billion
Rials.
Multi-Objective Planning for Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water...

2010-2011
7000
6000
Cropping area (ha)

5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
Wheat Grain Rice Potato Onion Feed
Products

Present In viwe of Indicating the Area Regardless of Indicating the Area

Fig. 3 The crop pattern presented by the model, in view of and regardless of the area bounds for the crops,
compared to the actual crop pattern in the right region

5.2 Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water During the Normal Year

The 2004–2005 water year was considered as the suitable indicator of a normal year.
According to the results, in this planning period, the model has managed to meet all the
constraints and satisfy the total water demands yielding optimal crop pattern with the highest
profitability in both regions. Figures 5 and 6 compare the crop pattern obtained by the model,
in view of and regardless of the constraints formulated in Eqs. (11) and (12), with the actual
crop pattern, in the right and left regions.
The maximum total net benefit generated by the management model in this planning period
was obtained for the Right region as 987.63 billion Rials and for the Left region as 1999.86
billion Rials for considering the crop area bounds and not considering crop area bounds,
respectively.

2010-2011
12000

10000
Cropping area (ha)

8000

6000

4000

2000

0
wheat Grain Rice Potato Onion Feed
Products

Present In viwe of Indicating the Area Regardless of Indicating the Area

Fig. 4 The crop pattern presented by the model, in view of and regardless of the area bounds for the crops,
compared to the actual crop pattern in the left region
 Sepahvand R. et al.

2004-2005
6000
Cropping area (ha)

5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
Wheat Grain Rice Potato Onion Feed
Products

Present In viwe of Indicating the Area Regardless of Indicating the Area

Fig. 5 The crop pattern presented by the model, in view of and regardless of the area bounds for the crops,
compared to actual crop pattern, in the Right region

5.3 Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water During the Wet Year

In order to develop a management model for the utilization of surface and ground water
resources in Left and Right regions during the wet year, the data obtained from year 2006–
2007 as the indicator for a wet year were used. According to the results obtained, the
model has managed to meet all the constraints and satisfy the water demands for the
optimal crop pattern in both regions and during all months. The crop pattern obtained from
the management model for the Left and Right regions in this planning year is shown in
Figs. 7 and 8.
The maximum total net benefit generated by the management model in this planning period
was obtained for the Right region as 942.098 billion Rials and for the Left region as 2068.46
billion Rials for considering the crop area bounds and not considering crop area bounds,
respectively.

2004-2005
12000
Cropping area (ha)

10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
wheat Grain Rice Potato Onion Feed
Products

Present In viwe of Indicating the Area Regardless of Indicating the Area

Fig. 6 The crop pattern presented by the model, in view of and regardless of the area bounds for the crops,
compared to the actual cropping pattern in the Left region
Multi-Objective Planning for Conjunctive Use of Surface and Ground Water...

2006-2007
6000

5000
Cropping area (ha)

4000

3000

2000

1000

0
Wheat Grain Rice Potato Onion Feed
Products

Present In viwe of Indicating the Area Regardless of Indicating the Area

Fig. 7 The crop pattern presented by the model, in view of and regardless of the area bounds for the crops,
compared to the actual crop pattern in the Right region

6 Conclusion

In this paper, a bi-objective non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-Type II (NSGA-II) with

two conflicting goals (minimization of water deficits and maximization of the net benefit from
the major crops), was used to develop the optimization model, while a genetic programming
surrogate simulation model was linked to the proposed optimization model to estimate the
response of the aquifer to the policies proposed by the optimization model and is executed
along with the optimization model.
In this study, the monthly upper limit of the surface water allocation was set to the
maximum historical surface water used in that month. Moreover, the monthly groundwater
extraction was limited to the maximum monthly groundwater withdrawal during all months of
the long-term statistical period. The maximum allowable groundwater extraction was also
restricted based upon the impact of the aquifer depletion on the groundwater level variations in
two types of rise and drawdown. In this approach, the rise of the groundwater level in the wet

2006-2007
14000
12000
Cropping area (ha)

10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
wheat Grain Rice Potato Onion Feed
Products

Present In viwe of Indicating the Area Regardless of Indicating the Area

Fig. 8 The crop pattern presented by the model, in view of and regardless of the area bounds for the crops,
compared to the actual crop pattern in the Left region
 Sepahvand R. et al.

years was encouraged, while the drastic drawdown of this level in dry years was discouraged
and was taken to be penalized, if the cumulative drawdown in this climatic condition exceeds a
pre-defined allowable limit. Therefore, the main goals of this study were mathematically
formulated considering the sustainability of the aquifer, as well.
Finally, the economic results of this study suggested a maximum increase in the net benefit
by 38.19%, 59.37% and 45%, as compared to those obtained in the actual operation in wet,
normal and dry years, respectively for the Right region. The net benefit was also increased by
at most 84.79%, 83.3% and 120.77% in wet, normal and dry years, respectively for the Left
region of the study area. As can be seen, the net benefit is more increased in the dry year than
that in the wet year in both regions. This result may be due to the effect of enforcing the
groundwater level to considerably rise over wet year, while an amount of drawdown is allowed
for the dry year. Therefore, the water supply in wet year is decreased compared to the actual
operation as the water demand is also decreased in order to optimally determining the crop
pattern in the management model. In contrast, the water supply almost remains unchanged
over the dry year, as compared to the actual operation, while there is a considerably decrease in
water demands in the dry year as taken into account in planning its optimal crop pattern,
contributing the water percentage met to be much more increased in the dry year than that in
the wet year. Consequently, the rate of increase of the net benefit obtained in dry year is more
than that in the wet year. Furthermore, the net benefit obtained in the Left region is generally
more than that in the Right region, mainly as a result of abundance of the surface water in the
Left region. As the future work, we aim to apply more advanced simulation and optimization
models to modeling the conjunctive water use, in addition to take uncertainty in the simulation
data into account to better present the nature of the water resources management problems.
Furthermore, we aim at applying optimal conjunctive use management to several sub-basins
with inter-basin water transfer.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Affiliations

Reza Sepahvand 1 & Hamid R. Safavi 1 & Farshad Rezaei 1

1
Department of Civil Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran