For decades now, pursuing and achieving water security has become one of the top most agendas of global development. Increasing population and subsequent development demand an increasing amount of freshwater for consumption. Historically, irrigated agriculture has been the biggest freshwater consumer, but its share is reducing due to its limited availability as well as competition from other sectors. However, in the current scenario of increasing water scarcity, agriculture and subsequently food security will bear the brunt of this reduced supply. Thus, improving the irrigation water management and propagating modernization of irrigation systems is of utmost importance in current times.

Modernization of irrigation systems entails holistic improvement of resource mobilization, delivery to the farm gates, water saving techniques, management practices, policies, institutional and financing mechanisms that ultimately result in agricultural, social, environmental and economic benefits. The topic of modernization and revitalization of irrigation systems is relevant to the vision and mission of ICID and of interest for its members. Thus, the flagship event of ICID, World Irrigation Forum 4, (WIF4) aims to highlight the importance of modernization of irrigation systems and discuss, in detail, different aspects of it, outlined in the sub-themes (ST). Given the above, papers are invited and discussed under the following Sub-themes: