Optimal Water Allocation Considering Water Diversion Projects in an Agricultural Irrigation District

Optimal water resource allocation in agricultural irrigation districts constitutes a core strategy for achieving coordinated regional water–food–ecosystem development. However, current studies rarely integrate inter-basin water diversion projects into the allocation, and the prolonged operation of diversion systems fails to adequately consider their ecological impacts in the irrigation districts. This study incorporates inter-basin water diversion into supply–demand dynamics and considers its influence on groundwater table changes in terrestrial ecological targets. Inexact two-stage stochastic programming (ITSP) was applied for optimal water allocation to address uncertainties from fluctuations in future water availability and interval ambiguity in socioeconomic information. Taking the densely populated agricultural irrigation district of Huaibei as a case study, we established a multi-stakeholder allocation model, considering the Yangtze-to-Huai water diversion project, to maximize comprehensive benefits under multiple scenarios of water availability for the years of 2030 and 2040. The results demonstrate that the district will face escalating water scarcity risks, with demand–supply gaps widening when available water resources decrease. The water redistribution in the second stage reduces scarcity-induced losses, achieving maximum comprehensive benefits. The water diversion project enhances supply capacity and boosts economic gains. The project can also decrease the fluctuation range of the total benefits by 5 × 10⁶ CNY (2030) and 3.4 × 10⁷ CNY (2040), compared with the scenario without the project. From 2030 to 2040, limited water resources will progressively shift toward sectors with higher economic output per unit water, squeezing agricultural allocations. Therefore, for irrigation districts in developing countries, maintaining a minimum guaranteed rate of agricultural water proves critical to safeguarding food security.