The application of role-playing games and agent-based modelling to the collaborative water management in peri-urban communities

A aplicação de jogos de RPG e modelagem baseada em agentes para o gerenciamento colaborativo da água em comunidades peri-urbanas

ABSTRACT

The environmental systems associated with water resources management have always been represented through physical factors and processes. In order to consider the social system coupled with the environmental system, a new modeling approach emerges, the agent-based modeling. Two steps are essential to build agent-based models-ABMs. The first step requires the agent behavior understanding and considers the influence of external factors in the agent decision-making. The second one is the system representation through an ABM. In this perspective, the WaDiGa water management role-playing game-RPG was applied to map the rural producers' behavior of a peri-urban region. In addition, an ABM was developed in the GAMA platform intended to represent the agents’ behavior and its consequences in the environment configuration. After applying the proposed methodology, it was concluded that the WaDiGa was able to identify factors that influence the local agents' decision-making, and that the game fulfills the function of a dialogue platform on the water resource theme, and could be used as a tool for environmental education and socio-hydrological modeling. The ABM developed was able to represent the relationship between the agricultural production of the community and the water use, presenting results similar to the results obtained in the WaDiGa.

Keywords:  Role-playing game; Socio-hydrology; Rural settlement