two important questions:

• Water: What issues are at stake?
• IA: How to link analytical and modelling approaches with participants?

summary of issues are looking at:

• Water demand, patterns management
• Perception and handling of risk
• Extreme events: (which may be very different from each other)
  • floods
  • droughts
  • peak demands: for example, in Switzerland this is related to climate.

This is also very much related to perceptions of risk; for example, in Holland, a major cultural shift in attitudes has been noted.

focus on transitions - and on institutional change

Institutions - have a set of shared rules governing behaviour and communication

• Formal institutions
  • legislation
  • technical regulation
  • market
• Informal institutions -
  • agreements
  • rules of good practice
  • habits of consumers
  • negotiation

Institutions are very fragmented in water. The different groups need to be brought together. These are different social groups, with different time and spatial scales.

Technical market, social perceptions - perceive value of water, risks differently

When describing regions, need to map out these different interaction forms.

water model

• How to represent the environment? - the whole ecosystem
• Spatial resolution - against representation on a very small scale - or boxes / exchanging
• What time scales are we looking at?
  • eg effect of regulation may be very much delayed
  • eg processes are different in different regions
  • eg uncertainties
• Focus on the representations of agents - may be different in different regions
• How do we agree on selection of issues?
  • important to cover all the issues.
  • each region has different issues. For example, in Oxford, demand may be reduced through management, so although extreme events are relevant, they may not be important.
  • Some issues are important in other areas, for example, in the Dutch case study, the development of nature is important. Also, water quality is an important issue for Barcelona, and supply is more important.
• Is the focus on institutional change appropriate?
  • for the French case, it may possibly not be institutional change
  • it is important to grasp how institutions interact with each other, and with individuals. Of course they may evolve, but not necessarily change.
  • The focus should be more orientated towards negotiation, which may or may not be about change