Multi-agent modeling for water policy impact assessment: a road map

Abstract

Water policies have a great impact upon different types of resources (water, land and soil resources; infrastructure and facilities; financial resources; environmental knowledge and information; etc.). They involve many individual or collective actors (users, managers, public or private companies, associations, etc.) as well as rules and norms of behavior that these actors are the recipients or agents. Complex systems, if any, these policies have several kinds of effects, expected and unexpected, direct and indirect effects, societal, economic, environmental and eco-systemic. The current development of multi-agent platforms opens up a new area for the definition, design, implementation and monitoring of water management by producing ex ante simulations of the impact of measures that promote water public policies and of the likely evolution of the socio-hydrosystem concerned. Here we give a quick overview of these new opportunities of water policy modeling and impact assessment. We summarize the steps of the modeling process and present the main ingredients entering in the composition of a platform dedicated to impact simulations. We also argue the interest of building water scenarios and producing useful indicators for decision-making regarding the use, distribution and management of water resources at the basin-scale.

Keywords

• Política da água
• Modelagem
• Avaliação de impacto
• Multi-agentes
• Cenário
• Indicadores para a tomada de decisões