Supporting participative decision process in water management

Abstract

Water management is an important public policy issue. It faces high level of conflicts, complexity and uncertainty. There is an increasing interest in enhancing multi-agent decision-making processes to overtake binding mercantile business. The development of dynamic decision-aiding tools and the analysis of interactions architectures are fundamental premises for a successful debate in water governance. These issues are faced by concepts such as Ostrom’s action arena and Ostanello-Tsoukiàs’ interaction space. The current paper reflects on the interaction space to support collective decision processes and develops a system dynamics model exploring how policies can influence the architecture of interactions in the agricultural water management of the Apulia Region (Southern Italy).