Agent-Based Modelling for representing water allocation methodologies in the irrigation system of the Formoso River Basin, Brazil

Abstract

The intersection of water and social systems is strictly linked to society's adjacent political and economic contexts, which adds complexity to water-related issues, such as new demographical, market, and behavioural conditions. Traditional hydrological modelling approaches have often failed to include social aspects and their impacts on hydrological processes when representing human actions as fixed external conditions, thus, neglecting dynamic and heterogeneous behaviours that are intrinsically human. As an alternative, Agent-Based Models (ABMs) can represent the complexity of modelled water resources systems and their interchange with social contexts. The Brazilian Formoso River Basin (FRB) is a human-water system characterized by intense agricultural activity where conflicts among water users are present. Aligned with the principles of socio-hydrology, this study proposes an ABM to represent the interaction of natural and social systems in the Urubu River basin, a sub-basin of the FRB. The model considers farmers and regulatory authorities as agents who act according to the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) paradigm. Farmers are heterogeneous decision-makers with distinct collaborative profiles towards water management strategies. Finally, a methodology to extract information on farmers' behaviour towards cooperation from water demand data is presented, which might contribute to the conceptualization of more complex socio-hydrological models.