Importance

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Abstract

A system and method for providing cooperative control of irrigation between a groundskeeper having immediate supervision on plants to be irrigated and management personnel remotely located by using weather data and water budget restrictions. The system implements a method that involves responding to a signal from an atmometer that a predetermined 'threshold' amount of water has been lost to evapotranspiration at or near an irrigation station. A daily total of these threshold signals are stored in a weather table for use in automatically determining a quantity of water that has been lost to evapotranspiration at the station since the most recent irrigation. The determined quantity is automatically combined with an evapotranspiration factor in order to determine how much water to replace. Alternatively, current data received from a remote site may used by the machine executed means to override the weather data table. An automatic check is performed to determine if the amount scheduled for application will exceed a predetermined budget based on historical weather data. If the budget is to be exceeded, an alert is sent via an attached display to an operator. The operator may use a keypad to instruct control logic to perform corrective action. If no corrective action is taken, then a 'budget noncompliance' report is recorded in permanent storage for review by management personnel.

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First Claim