an empirical method to measure the relative efficiency of irrigation methods in agricultural industry

One of the most important issues affecting future world is managing the existing water resources. There is no doubt that global warming has created significant troubles on people's lives and it has caused shortage of water in the world. Therefore, we need to manage the water resources by allocating appropriate methods. In this paper, we use data envelopment analysis to measure the relative efficiency of fourteen different irrigation methods. The proposed model of this paper uses four inputs including cost, risk, maintenance and expertise and two outputs including flexibility and durability of irrigation methods. The preliminary results indicate that two surface irrigation methods, one sprinkler irrigation method and one subsurface irrigation technique are considered efficient. Other irrigation techniques are only as much as 50 to 94 percent efficient compared with these five irrigation techniques