This is Andy Ford at WSU replying to the question about modeling and
simulation of water management from K. Roman Sliwa of the University of the
Americas-Puebla in Mexico.
A handful of System Dynamics practioneers are looking into water
resource issues. Yaman Barlas and his students at BogazicYi University in
Istanbul, for example, have been working this topic the past few years.
Another participant from the middle east region is Ziad Shawwash.
Shawwash built a System Dynamics model of the Jordanian water system. He
is completing his Ph.D. at the University of British Colombia. A short
description of his model appears in SYSTEM DYNAMICS 96,the proceedings of
the 1996 meeting in Cambridge.
Other recent examples of System Dynamics applications to water
resources are John Bartons policy model for a retail water company in
Australia and Tusy Adibrotos watershed management model for Java Island
in Indonesia. Both of these were presented at SYSTEM DYNAMICS 96.
Kathleen Truman, of the Environmental Studies Department at the
University of Nevada at Las Vegas, is working on water issues in the
American southwest, and she has extensive experience with agriculture and
natural resource issues in Mexico.
Here at WSU, my students and I have been using System Dynamics to study
water issues in three situations:
1. water supply and demand for the public utility in the City of Los
Angeles (the PhD topic for Hojun Sun),
2. using "management flight simulators" for group discussion/learning
about water use in the Snake River Basin (to be published in the next issue
of the SYSTEM DYNAMICS REVIEW), and
3. classroom use of a "management flight simulator" to allow students
to take the controls of a hypothetical western river called "The Idagon."
----------------------------------------------------------
Andy Ford
Program in Environmental Science and Regional Planning
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-4430
(509) 335-7846
FordA@mail.wsu.edu
----------------------------------------------------------