Simulating stakeholder support in a policy process: An application to river management

The authors present an agent-based model representing a policy process among stakeholders of river management. For evaluating the different river management alternatives, the agent-based model is coupled to an integrated river model that describes the impacts of river management, such as flood risk, nature development, and costs. The model is applied to the case of the ongoing Dutch river management project "Grensmaas." The authors analyze stakeholder support and reconstruct the observed policy outcomes of the Grensmaas project over the past 15 years to provide a first validation of the model. They then assess how stakeholder support and the policy outcome might change when stakeholders would change their preference structures or take climate change into account. They argue that the main virtue of the developed modeling framework lies in its application within participatory processes, to support stakeholders to reflect on their goals and uncertainty perspectives in a social context.