Resumo/Summary:

The main challenge in the project is the study of water management problem as an optimal control problem using and/or developing mathematical tools within the followings subjects: statistics, mathematical modelling, numerical optimization and optimal control.
The main goals of this project are:

1. To formulate the problem of the irrigation system planning as an optimal control problem using mathematical modelling techniques, statistical tools and agronomic knowledge.

2. To solve the formulated problem using different numerical methods and considering an adaptive time-mesh refinement strategy, leading to results with higher accuracy and yet with lower overall computational time.

3. To characterize and/or validate the results obtained using the control theory and to develop optimal control tools in such a way that they are able to provide proper answers to the specificities of the problem, namely to deal with climatic unpredictable behaviour.

4. To develop software tools that may be implemented with low cost, and, that encompasses not only the determination of the evapotranspiration value, but also the percolation and runoff values. Thus the modelling of the real life problem should be as close as possible to reality.

5. To apply the ''software'' in two distinct main crops of campus of Universidade de Trás-dos-Montes to test the numerical models developed and its implementation.