Agent-Based Model Application for Resource Management Analysis

Due to climate change and population growth, the agriculture sector has been faced with two challenges; securing water and food and transferring into sustainable resource management. To systematize resource management which currently mainly relies on farmers' experience, digital technologies have been developed. Considering current tighter resource availability, it is desirable to examine resource management behavior of beneficiaries using scarce resources to analyze resilience and adaptability of institutions. In this study, we analyzed factors of water use behavior of Water Users Associations (WUAs) to solve water allocation problem with Agent-Based Model (ABM). The simulation results show that factors of water use behavior were water resources and the existence of different water use laws, and downstream WUAs developed adaptation methods. To enhance sustainable resource management, ABM can be applied to analyze factors and their rules and/or laws to understand what enhances resilience and adaptability of institutions.