Multiagent Systems and Distributed Constraint Reasoning for Regulatory Mechanism Design in Water Management

Abstract

AbstractMany water resources systems include multiple, independent, and distributed decision makers representing different and conflicting interests. In much of the water resources literature, the operation of these systems is studied assuming a fully cooperative attitude by the parties involved and maximizing the global efficiency at the system-level. However, assuming the presence of a social planner might be questionable when multiple institutions are involved, particularly in transboundary systems. At the other extreme, totally uncoordinated strategies among institutionally independent decision makers, acting according to the principle of individual-rationality, are more often experienced in these contexts, yielding a decrease in the system-level performance. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed based on multiagent systems to support the design of regulatory mechanisms, which drive the originally fully independent decision makers towards a more coordinated and system-wide efficient situation. T...