Agent Based Simulation of Drought Management in Practice - Advances in Social Simulation - page 244

set of simulation show that the Gesper model is operational and proposes a sound
basis to explore various scenarios of drought action plan and water uses. Capacity to
reproduce realistic hydrologic patterns, including statistical description, makes it
legitimate to be used to understand the dynamics induced by multiple uses and
multiple assessments. In the example above farmers act upon their own qualification
of water drought which can be different of qualification on the administration side.
These qualifications are locally dependent but this location is encapsulated at each
agent level. The outcome, on which the communication can occur, is whether there is
a situation of drought or not. The model is fully spatially explicit and generates
dynamically the hydrological state of each land cell. Granularity is still a little bit
coarse (500m x 500m) for farm representation but it fits the data available for
physical environment and allows keeping computing time low.
We expect this kind of tool to be useful at a meta-level. The water and aquatic
environment agency considers that it will push water administration at county level to
pay more attention to the assessment step in the enforcement of drought action plan.
Discrepancies between assessments and the contestation which happens to occur in
consequence are not only an issue of strategic game and acting in bad faith. It is also
due to a true diversity of perceptions with potential consequences on effectiveness of
the plan on drought situation.
Acknowledgement. This work has been done thanks to financial support of French
environmental agency ONEMA.
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