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6. Conclusion
Decision Support Systems have transitioned from engineering tools to systems that provide
frameworks for stakeholder participation to guide, inform and support decision making in a
transparent and more sustainable way. The research and past experiences presented in this
chapter have shown that participatory planning and management processes can greatly
benefit from an integrative and holistic modeling approach. Models of different resolution
and complexity that serve different purposes can be used to inform each other through
feedbacks. While high-resolution Land Surface Models are necessary when there is a need to
accommodate in detail the processes in the physical environment (such as the land-
atmosphere partitioning of water and energy, the role of vegetation and the interactions
between surface and groundwater hydrology), medium- and coarse-resolution models are
typically better suited to modeling human interventions on the environment (such as land-
use management, engineering infrastructure). Medium resolution models allow us to
represent water allocation and re-distribution within the system and across uses, while
coarse resolution models are used to properly describe socio-economic and institutional
aspects of water management over the natural and engineered system, with a resolution at
the scale of the sub-watershed. In addition to providing an efficient way to represent the
coupled natural-human system, a major benefit of multiple resolution modeling is that
information and findings can be readily transferred across models and used for model
refinement. Information regarding natural processes, climate change impacts and feedbacks
in the natural system can be up-scaled to higher level models, while behavioral and policy
feedbacks from the socio-economic and institutional models can be used to drive lower
resolution models and assess impacts on the natural system.
This integrated modeling approach can be the scientific foundation for participatory
planning processes and the collaborative development of decision support tools. The
combination of structured stakeholder participation and the use of integrative modeling will
allow the proper identification of problems and management objectives in the basin, as well
as a better shared understanding of the system functioning, and the development of future
scenarios and management alternatives. Based on conflict resolution concepts, this
methodology will not only lead to agreed-upon management solutions, but also to a well
informed and educated stakeholder community in the basin. Sustainable learning comes
with a better understanding of the system as a whole; and problem-solving, over the long
term, can benefit from the human capital among individuals involved in participatory
processes and the groups they represent. Past studies have pointed out the importance of
human capital in society over economic welfare, as well as the mechanisms for ensuring it
(education, research, health care, social investments), as the key quality required to address
environmental and sustainability challenges. The reinvestment of resources towards human
capital (knowledge) in a higher priority over economic capital can be in itself a definition of
a sustainable system.
This resonates well with the learning goal of adaptive management. In the present time of
rapid economic and environmental change, the future now seems to be more uncertain
than ever. With the influence of climate change, the premise of a stationary state on which
much of water resources planning and management are based, is now compromised. It is
likely that we will have to change the ways in which we extract and use information from
the past to predict the future. The implementation of efficient adaptive management
mechanisms combined with integrative multi-resolution modeling capabilities will have
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