title: A water resources simulation gaming model for the Invitational Drought Tournament.
abstract: A system dynamics-based simulation gaming model, developed as a component of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Invitational Drought Tournament (IDT; Hill et al., 2014), is introduced in this paper as a decision support tool for drought management at the river-basin scale. This IDT Model provides a comprehensive and integrated overview of drought conditions, and illustrates the broad effects of socio-economic drought and mitigation strategies. It is intended to provide a safe, user-friendly experimental environment with fast run-times for testing management options, and to promote collaborative decision-making and consensus building. Examples of model results from several recent IDT events demonstrate potential effects of drought and the short-to longer-term effectiveness of policies selected by IDT teams; such results have also improved teams' understanding of the complexity of water resources systems and their management trade-offs. The IDT Model structure and framework can also be reconfigured quickly for application to different river basins.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, 9105 116th St, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Electronic address: kai7@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, 9105 116th St, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Electronic address: evan.davies@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: E G R
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Davies
mesh_terms: D002170:Canada; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods; D003657:Decision Making; D055864:Droughts; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D018910:Video Games; D062066:Water Resources
keywords: Drought management; Invitational Drought Tournament; Simulation gaming; Socio-economic drought; System dynamics; Water resources management