MODELLING FOR SUSTAINABLE
ADAPTATION PLANNING
Prof. Alexis Drogoul
UMMISCO/ IRD-France
SUMMARY
The use of GIS and spatial information has become essential in
planning the adaptation of human communities to the impacts of
climate change and disasters, especially in developing countries where
other alternative infrastructures do not always exist. Reducing the
vulnerability of communities to these impacts, while increasing their
resilience through a sustainable path to development, requires however
more advanced tools, like dynamic integrated models of socio-ecosystems, able
to capture and represent the complex interactions and feedback loops
between a changing society and its changing environment in
multiple climatic scenarios.
The design of such models raises different challenges, among
which:
· The necessity to support
multidisciplinary contributions as their scope expands beyond
climate-related issues and spatial information to embrace social, economical or
ecological ones;
· The necessity to offer ways
to represent (and explore) the complexity of the socio-ecological processes
that need to adapt or be adapted;
· The necessity to support
stakeholders to participate in the design and assessment of alternate
adaptation strategies.
It is argued in this speech that agent-based modeling (ABM) can
provide a capable framework for addressing these challenges. Current
research perspectives, illustrated by examples taken from the
work of IRD modellers with Vietnamese partners, will be presented,
with the main aim of opening a fruitful discussion with the audience
about the role of models in Sustainability Science.