Participatory Modeling for Watershed Management: The Use Role-playing Game and MAS Model

Scarce farm land and water resources in the highland watersheds of northern Thailand coupled with multiple users have led to conflicts among stakeholders who play important roles in the system dynamics. Integrating companion modeling and multi-agent systems (MAS) can facilitate adaptive learning processes to result in a decentralized collective management strategy that meets the balanced needs of all parties. However, this requires innovative methods and tools, and coordination from all stakeholders involved in the process. This paper presents the use of role-playing games (RPG) with local stakeholders using simplified rules and environment to facilitate dialog among the party and to understand stakeholder behavior in using and managing land and forest resources. Knowledge obtained from the game and following interviews was used to develop MAS model to reproduce the context of the games. The model will be used in further participatory MAS modeling