Practicing volumetric management on a departmental scale: inventory and analysis through a modeling approach

Abstract

In the actual context of agriculture, the irrigation water management is a main issue to preserve water and promote an agriculture which is both competitive and environment friendly. In many French departments, innovative water management practices are set up. The volumetric water management allows an equal access to water for each farmer using irrigation by awarding water quota to each another. In this article, by a ground survey and an industrial modelling approach, we propose to identify and characterize the main activities and information used in volumetric water management. We then discuss the interest of these models to evaluate the various organizations and to design new information and management systems.