MUSIC Assistant-Director Beaudry Kock leading GWBSIM modeling workshop in Idaho next week
GWBSIM 1.0 is an agent-based simulation tool under construction by a MUSIC/US Bureau of Reclamation/Idaho Institute of Water Resources partnership, led by MUSIC Assistant-Director Beaudry Kock and Bryce Contor of IWRRI. The tool seeks to couple existing hydrologic simulation tools with a fully-featured agent-based model of society and economy, to test out alternative options for ground water banking in the Eastern Snake Plain. Faced with increased uncertainty in water management decision-making due to climatic, demographic and economic change in the region, the Bureau of Reclamation is interested in exploring alternative, innovative approaches to meeting all the needs of the basin under changing circumstances. The simulation tool is due for beta release at the beginning of September, and this workshop is an opportunity for local and regional stakeholders to give their feedback on early versions of the model. A critical concern of the modeling team is that the model be accessible to stakeholders: this workshop is one of the approaches being taken to ensure that concerns and criticisms of the stakeholder group are taken into account early on.
A core function of the model is to capture essential and typical social, economic and hydrologic dynamics for the Eastern Snake Plain. Each agent has a particular role within the model: irrigators are committed to choosing, planting, harvesting and selling crops (the choice of crop, how they plant, harvest and sell that crop, are all decisions each agent makes autonomously); the water management agent is committed to ensuring that other water using agents operate within the law; and so on. All the agents are situated within a hydrologic environment, where they can interact (through their water use behavior) with ground and surface waters. Overlain on this core function is the ground water banking institution itself: the institution provides a set of rules and logistical mechanisms for managing the deposit or withdrawal of water from the Eastern Snake Plain aquifer. Agents can make deposits or withdrawals depending on their own motivations and resources and the rules of the bank. The combination of a base model that captures key local social, economic and environmental dynamics, with a sophisticated simulation of a water banking institution, fulfills the model's essential purpose: to provide a sandbox in which stakeholders and water managers can play with different options for ground water banking without the expense and risk of real world trials.
Stakeholders have been engaged at two points in the modeling: an initial interviewing stage, the data from which were used to build the preliminary social and economic structure of the agent-model; and the upcoming workshop, where the stakeholders will have an opportunity to explore the model for themselves, as well as offer comments and criticisms which will directly inform model development prior to beta release.
Aside from developing and making available a practical tool, the modeling team will be using the completed model to explore the influence of modeled versus real world data on receptiveness to major water management institutions; and the effect of expanding institutional capacity on the likelihood of water conflict.