*3.2. Methodology*

### 3.2.1. Historical Consumption Data and Probability Function

Based on the total consumption provided by the entity, an average consumption of 3189 m3/ha has been estimated. Therefore, the annual average consumption is 925,427 m<sup>3</sup> in the time series studied 2003–2014 (Figure 6).

**Figure 6.** Measured Annual Consumption in Vallada case study network.

The next steps allow establishing consumption patterns:


**Figure 7.** Distribution of annual consumptions in Vallada case study.

**Figure 8.** Pattern of irrigation needs: Top-Crop of olive. Bottom-Crop of citrus.

### 3.2.2. Pattern of Irrigation Habits

Habit patterns of farmers obtained by interviews, are defined as follows:

1. Analyzing the information obtained from interviews, two trends of irrigations have been depicted. Small farmers avoid Sunday as irrigation day and Saturday appears with double preference than the rest of the days (Figure 9a). Big farmers also have double preference for Saturday, but do not avoid irrigation on Sunday (Figure 9b).


**Figure 9.** Weekly trend of irrigation pattern according to the number of sectors in the plot areas.

**Figure 10.** Patterns of maximum days between irrigations.

**Figure 11.** Patterns of irrigation duration.

A first pattern is assigned to the winter months from October to April and considers that the irrigation starts between 8 A.M. and 6 P.M. A second pattern is assigned to the summer months, from May to September, where the irrigation avoids hours of day with higher temperatures. The watering schedule starts between 4 A.M. and 12 P.M. and from 6 P.M. to 12 A.M. Finally, a third pattern function is defined for irrigating plots with more of two sectors, at any time of the day along the year.
