DOING POLICY IN THE LAB! OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE USE OF MODEL-BASED POLICY ANALYSIS FOR COMPLEX DECISION-MAKING

For models to have an impact on policy-making, they need to be used. Exploring the relationships between policy models, model uptake and policy dynamics is the core of this article. What particular role can policy models play in the analysis and design of policies? Which factors facilitate (inhibit) the uptake of models by policy-makers? What are possible pathways to further develop modelling approaches to better meet the challenges facing agriculture today? In this paper, we address these issues from three different points of view, each of which should shed some light on the subject. The first point of view discusses models in the framework of complex adaptive systems and uncertainty. The second point of view looks at the dynamic interplay between policies and models using the example of modelling in agricultural economics. The third point of view addresses conditions for a successful application of models in policy analysis.modelling, complexity, participatory modelling, policy analysis, model use, Agricultural and Food Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Variable time scales, agent-based models, and role-playing games: The PIEPLUE river basin management game

This article presents a specific association of a role-playing game (RPG) and an agent-based model (ABM) aimed at dealing with a large range of time scales. Applications to the field of natural resource management lead one to consider the short time scale of resource use in practice at the same time as the longer ones related to resource dynamics or actors' investments. In their daily practice, stakeholders are translating their long-term strategies, a translation that is contextualized and combined with some cooccurring events. Long-term thinking is required for sustainable use of natural resources, but it should take into account its necessary adaptation on a short time scale. This raises the necessity for tools able to tackle jointly these various time scales. The similarity of architecture between computerized ABMs and RPGs makes them easy to associate in a hybrid tool, targeted at meeting this requirement. The proposition of this article is to allocate the representation of short time scales to computerized ABMs and the long ones to RPGs, while keeping the same static structural conceptual model, shared as a common root by both. This synergy is illustrated with PIEPLUE, an interactive setting tackling water-sharing issues.GESTION DE L'EAU;BASSIN VERSANT;RESSOURCE NATURELLE;MODELE;JEU DE ROLE;SYSTEME MULTIAGENTS;AGENT-BASED MODEL;CASE STUDY OF WATER SHARING;CONCEPTUAL MODEL;HYBRID TOOL;INVESTMENTS;LONG-TERM ISSUES;NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT;PIEPLUE;PARTICIPATORY MODELING;RESOURCE DYNAMICS;RESOURCE USE;ROLE-PLAYING GAME;STAKEHOLDERS;SUSTAINABLE USE OF NATURAL RESOURCES;TIME-SCALE DIVERSITY;VARIABLE TIME SCALES;WATER MANAGEMENT

Toward a relational concept of uncertainty: about knowing too little, knowing too differently, and accepting not to know

Uncertainty of late has become an increasingly important and controversial topic in water resource management, and natural resources management in general. Diverse managing goals, changing environmental conditions, conflicting interests, and lack of predictability are some of the characteristics that decision makers have to face. This has resulted in the application and development of strategies such as adaptive management, which proposes flexibility and capability to adapt to unknown conditions as a way of dealing with uncertainties. However, this shift in ideas about managing has not always been accompanied by a general shift in the way uncertainties are understood and handled. To improve this situation, we believe it is necessary to recontextualize uncertainty in a broader way¿relative to its role, meaning, and relationship with participants in decision making¿because it is from this understanding that problems and solutions emerge. Under this view, solutions do not exclusively consist of eliminating or reducing uncertainty, but of reframing the problems as such so that they convey a different meaning. To this end, we propose a relational approach to uncertainty analysis. Here, we elaborate on this new conceptualization of uncertainty, and indicate some implications of this view for strategies for dealing with uncertainty in water management. We present an example as an illustration of these concepts. Key words: adaptive management; ambiguity; frames; framing; knowledge relationship; multiple knowledge frames; natural resource management; negotiation; participation; social learning; uncertainty; water managemen

Constructing delta realities; Joint Fact Finding challenges in Serious Game Design

__Abstract__ This paper addresses the challenges of Joint Fact Finding (JFF) in spatial planning and design. JFF is an important component of a deliberative planning practice: The construction of (problematic) realities is fundamental for the formulation of challenges and solutions. Information is often contested in complex planning processes due to different interests, values and perspectives. Carefully designed interaction procedures are needed to negotiate the relevance and validity of information sources. Particularly promising procedures for this are Serious Games: Facilitating joint reality construction through immersive simulations, they are appealing ways to engage not only knowledge-oriented researchers, but also practice-oriented stakeholders and professionals. Their concreteness speaks to spatial planning and design as crafts. Still, the development of such games is not without its challenges and trade-offs. As procedures for reality construction, they cannot escape the power-laden nature of knowledge. We present a case study on developing a spatial design-oriented game, and analyze it in the tradition of the sociology of translations, aided by literature on serious game development. As indicated, Serious Games could function as JFF procedures in spatial planning and design. Moreover, their architecture can be considered a ‘boundary object’ providing actors an environment that accommodates information sharing, learning and joint reality construction. In this way the game facilitates the building of capacity to generate and integrate knowledge for spatial planning and design. In our project on integrative planning in delta areas, the game architecture accommodated researchers and practitioners in governance, spatial design and geo-information. Striving for interdisciplinary synergies, the game architecture was to be accordingly polyvalent. Its main innovative features would be its generative and integrative capacity, i.e. its capacity to both co-produce and integrate a diversity of information sources and to co-develop/generate spatial designs on this basis. How can joint fact finding in spatial planning and design be organized through a serious game in such a way that it develops integrative and generative capacity, and which challenges and trade-offs are faced in realizing this goal? In this paper we describe and discuss the practical sh

An Objective-Based Perspective on Assessment of Model-Supported Policy Processes

Simulation models, being in use for a long time in natural sciences and engineering domains, are diffusing to a wider context including policy analysis studies. The differences between the nature of the domain of application, as well as the increased variety of usage partially induced by this difference naturally imply new challenges to be overcome. One of these challenges is related to the assessment of the simulation-based outcomes in terms of their reliability and relevance in the policy context being studied. The importance of this assessment is twofold. First of all, it is all about conducting a high quality policy study with effective results. However, the quality of the study does not necessarily imply acceptance of the results by the clients and/or colleagues. This problem of policy analysts increases the importance of such an assessment; an effective assessment may induce the acceptance of the conclusions drawn from the study by the clients and/or colleagues. The main objective of this paper is to introduce an objective-based assessment perspective for simulation model-supported policy studies. As a first step towards such a goal, an objective-based classification of models is introduced. Based on that, we will discuss the importance of different aspects of the assessment for each type. In doing so, we aim to provide a structured discussion that may serve as a sort of methodological guideline to be used by policy analysts, and also by clients.Simulation, Validation, Model Assessment, Policy Analysis, Model Typology

Towards a relational concept of uncertainty: incorporating the human dimension

In this paper, we extend the conceptualization of uncertainties in natural resources management. Uncertainties come in different kinds, as it is apparent from the multiple classifications and typologies of uncertainties in the literature. Here, we re-contextualize uncertainty in a broader way - its role, meaning and relationship with knowing and acting persons - because it is from this relationship where problems and solutions emerge. We argue that uncertainties have a relational aspect that has to do with how decision makers relate, through their knowledge and actions, to the human-technology-environmental systems to be managed ¿ an aspect that is not fully taken into account in the current literature. Our aim in this paper is to include the human dimension more fully in the conceptualization of uncertainties by (1) adding ambiguity as an important kind of uncertainty, (2) re-conceptualizing uncertainty as relational, and (3) indicating some implications of this reconceptualized overview for strategies for dealing with uncertainty in water management