An Agent-Group-Role based modelling framework for participative water management support

Agent-based modelling can be used as a tool for participative water management support. Within this framework, we want to develop architectural features that can improve system understanding at the collective and individual levels. We present a modelling framework which aims at bringing particular insights into the interrelations between temporal, spatial and social scales of the resource management process. To study these links, we adopt an approach based on the notions of role, group and agent: roles represent the functions of agents as members of a group; a group consists of a set of agents that interact in a process through their roles. In this way, groups describe collective structures through behavior types given by roles. Agents executing roles modulate these collective behavior types through their individual features. Agents carrying out several roles undertake a superposition of behaviors induced by collective dynamics. The Agent-Group-Role structure building process is carried out by developing models within a research project that supports a co-decision procedure taking place in the French Drôme River basin. We validate the features of our framework through regular field testing of the models we build on top of it. We extend and enhance our framework through progressive complexity augmentation of these models. In conclusion, we aim at demonstrating the suitability of the Agent-Group-Role formalism for the resolution of the duality between individual and collective levels of a system.