AccScience Publishing / IJOCTA / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/IJOCTA026040013
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Agentic artificial intelligence-driven digital twin for real-time irrigation control with fuzzy sustainability objectives

Hamed Nozari1* Zornitsa Yordanova1
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1 Industrial Business Department, Business Faculty, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria
Received: 23 January 2026 | Revised: 27 February 2026 | Accepted: 12 March 2026 | Published online: 15 April 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
Abstract

Irrigation management in modern agriculture faces simultaneous challenges, including water scarcity, climate uncertainty, and the need for long-term sustainability. In this study, an integrated framework for real-time irrigation control is presented, in which a digital twin is not merely used as a monitoring or simulation tool but is directly embedded in the decision-making and control loop through an agent-based fuzzy multi-objective optimization mechanism. Unlike conventional smart irrigation approaches that rely on static thresholds or offline optimization, the proposed framework enables adaptive, context-based decision updates by continuously integrating physical system feedback into a dynamic optimization engine. The decision-making agent, by simultaneously assessing soil, climate, and plant growth conditions, generates irrigation policies that balance water consumption, crop growth, and environmental sustainability requirements under fuzzy uncertainty. Experimental results show that using dynamic feedback in the digital twin framework improves the multi-objective performance index by more than 12% compared to the static state and significantly reduces control fluctuations. Convergence, stability under uncertainty, and parameter sensitivity analyses also indicate that the proposed framework can establish a sustainable balance across water resource utilization, crop yield, and environmental considerations. The findings indicate that this approach can provide a practical and reliable platform for transitioning to smart, adaptive, and sustainable irrigation systems.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Digital twin
Smart irrigation
Agent-based decision-making
Agricultural sustainability
Multi-objective optimization
Funding
This study was financially supported by the UNWE Research Program.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.
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An International Journal of Optimization and Control: Theories & Applications, Electronic ISSN: 2146-5703 Print ISSN: 2146-0957, Published by AccScience Publishing