From stakeholders to agents - An analysis of social behaviour of actors within a negotiation process upon a water management project

Introduction

The European project FIRMA (Freshwater Integrated Resource Management with Agents) aims to improve water resource planning by combining agent-based modelling and integrated assessment to describe physical, hydrological, social and economic aspects of water resource management in an integrated way. A new type of IA models will be developed in which stakeholders, like planners, decision makers, consumers, suppliers and nature organisation are explicitly represented using agent-based, social simulation techniques. An innovative method used by the FIRMA project is the incorporation of stakeholder participation for model development to improve the quality of the model, to raise the interest of stakeholders and to increase their confidence in the model results (Downing et al, 2000).

The case study

In this paper we describe the Maaswerken project as one specific case study of the FIRMA project. Maaswerken is one of the largest water-related infrastructure projects in the Netherlands. The planning of the two sub-projects ‘Grensmaas’ and ‘Zandmaas/Maasroute’ is a long-term and complex procedure involving three main issues: Flood control, improvement of the navigation route and nature development. This will be achieved by a combination of deepening and widening of the summer bed, lowering of the floodplains and side gullies, altering embankments, and upgrading of the navigation infrastructure. A successful solution can only be expected by applying an integrated approach that also factors in the side effects of the planned measures plus the impacts on affected people.

Methodology

The integrated approach mentioned above involves a (physical) integrated assessment model (IAM), an agent-based model (ABM), the involvement of stakeholders in the modelling process and a conceptual framework to couple the two models.

The Participatory Integrated Assessment comprises four main tasks within the FIRMA approach:
1. eliciting mental models of organisations and institutions, collecting additional information as input for the agent-based model, and problem analysis (interviews and dialog methods)
2. communicating and developing the model with the stakeholders (interviews and dialog methods)
3. validating the model structure and simulation results with the stakeholders (focus groups)
4. identifying system problems and learning new strategies for system management (focus groups and interviews).
An analysis of the most relevant actors and their interaction within the target system is required to create an interface between the participative process and the agent-based model. In the case of the Maaswerken project the ensemble of actors consists, primarily, of a number of governmental and non-governmental institutions. 

The agent-based model applied here is based upon a complex or cognitive agent approach developed by social psychologists. The internal structure of a cognitive agent consists in principle of goals and beliefs. Goals are states of the world desired by a particular agent. This is an assumption for agent activities, whereas beliefs represent particular perspectives or world views of an agent. The cognitive agent architecture is documented in Conte & Castelfranchi (1995). The implementation of agent attributes into a computer program can be achieved by assigning rules to each agent by help of declarative statements. This may be conditional expressions that can be written in declarative programming languages like SDML (strictly declarative macro language), MIMOSE, PartNet or others. The inter-agent structure is a negotiation process about planning strategies and policy measures including side effects.
The Integrated Assessment model describes the relevant processes related to the management of the Meuse in Limburg. This computer model will include simple hydrological modules to calculate the effects of various river engineering alternatives of the Maaswerken project on the state of the water balance in Limburg. Impact modules will relate these results to consequences for river functions such as safety, shipping and nature. Input to the model will be derived from a set of integrated, perspective-based scenarios that sketch possible changes in climate and socio-economic boundary conditions in a consistent way. 

The conceptual framework of this approach (fig 1), generally, consists of a coupled agent-based model and a (physical) integrated assessment model. The participatory process will be interlinked with the model during the model design phase as well as the model validation phase. In other words the communication between stakeholders and modellers is an essential part of the entire modelling process. 
The environment or world as it is perceived by each agent is incorporated within their belief system. The agent may be seen as an independent sub program capable of reflecting on own goals and beliefs by comparing them to the changing environment. A ‘belief update’ can be performed that may lead to a change in goals as well as a change in expectations (how the world might look after implementing a particular strategy). An update of beliefs can be implemented by a changing set of assumptions within various agents. The beliefs can be altered during the process of perceiving a changing world as well as processing information broadcast by other agents. Alterations will be triggered by reaching threshold values like the height of dykes, the area of nature development, the amount of gravel to be extracted, etc. 
The implementation of a strategy or measures can be seen as the ‘response’ part of the pressure-state -response-impact (PSRI) concept of the IA model, and initiates a state changing process within a simulation with a time of about ten years. The PSRI model is able to implement ‘objective’ parameters like river bed geometry, land use change or flood probability as well as external and internal (in relation to the catchment in Limburg) pressures like climate change or demand for housing, and surprises (e.g. floods). 
The changing (model) world as well as the changing behaviour of other agents is permanently perceived by each agent, and may lead to belief updates and/or (re)actions according to the agent’s endowment. This way we are able to analyse two types of processes:
1.	Agent-environment interaction (reacting on changing river bed geometry, nature development, side effects, events like floods, pollution, etc.)
2.	Agent – agent interaction (communication about planned measures, negotiation, coalition forming and others)

Conclusion

The aim of this approach is not simply to describe, but, additionally, to explain reasons for particular actions and their consequences on the environment as well as on other actors within a specific target system like a river basin. The combination of models as well as the simulation setup enables modellers and planners to deal with a complex setting of interrelated issues as well as the consequences of human activities in an interactive, consistent and dynamic way. This approach is a step forward to a decision support system (DSS) that enables planners to model not only the physical processes of a particular system, but also incorporate social dynamics from the early stages of planning activities. Moreover, it can improve the communication between planners, decision makers and stakeholders by making the relationship between physical and social processes explicit.

References:

Conte, Rosaria, and Cristiano Castelfranchi (1995) Cognitive and social action. UCL Press limited. London. 215p.

Downing, Thomas E., Scott Moss and Claudia Pahl-Wostl (2000) Understanding Climate policy Using participatory Agent-based Social Simulation. In: Moss, Scott and Paul Davidsson (Volume Eds.) (2001) Multi-agent-based Simulation: Second international Workshop, MABS 2000. Boston, MA, USA, July. Revised and Additional Papers. Springer 2001. In Lecture notes in computer science; Vol. 1979: Lecture notes in Artificial Intelligence.

Gilbert, N. (1999). “The simulation of social processes.” SMAGET conference, Clermont Ferrand, France.

, Jörg Krywkow1,2, Pieter Valkering1, Anne van der Veen2, Jan Rotmans1 
1International Centre for Integrative Studies (ICIS), University of Maastricht, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht
2Department for Civil Engineering and Management, University of  Twente, Postbus 217,  7500 AE Enschede