=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-494/paper-15
|storemode=property
|title=Managing Water Demand as a Regulated Open MAS
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-494/coinpaper6.pdf
|volume=Vol-494
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/mallow/BottiGGN09
}}
==Managing Water Demand as a Regulated Open MAS==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-494/coinpaper6.pdf
1
Managing water demand as a regulated open MAS.
(Work in progress)
Vicente Botti1 , Antonio Garrido1 , Adriana Giret1 and Pablo Noriega2
1
DSIC, Department of Information Systems and Computation, Universitat Politècnica de Valencia,
2
IIIA, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, CSIC, Spanish Scientific Research Council,
{vbotti,agarridot,agiret}@dsic.upv.es, pablo@iiia.csic.es
I. WATER MANAGEMENT AS A MAS In brief, we claim that one can see the use of water in a
basin as a regulated open MAS and we bet on designing
The management of natural resources is a challenge of an agent-based market of water rights to micro-model
significant social relevance. At the core of water policy model demand and foster efficient use.
is the need to foster a more rational use of the resource We foresee the following potential uses for that mar-
and this may be addressed by creating an efficient market ket:
of water rights [4]. However the design and operation of
A test bed for agreement technologies. From a research
such a market is not an easy endeavor because it needs
perspective, our interest is on the role agreement plays
to coexist in a complex social and legal framework.
in this social system, on the mechanisms that facilitate
Most water management models are based on equa- an agreement, on the management of agreements, on
tional descriptions of aggregate supply and demand in a the normative organizational environments. Thus, we
water basin [2] but few include an agent-based perspec- are designing a testbed to provide adequate inspiration
tive. We explore an alternative approach in which indi- for theoretical cogitations on agreement and for the
vidual and collective agents are an essential component development of the corresponding technologies [3]
because their behavior (and effects) may be influenced A demand component of a sophisticated basin model
by policy-making. Our focus is on water-right demand to visualize and explore water management policies.
and, in particular, on the type of legal and market
A prototype for an online market of water-rights.
mechanisms that may have an incidence on that, so that
water use is efficient. In particular we acknowledge the
following facts: (1) that many stakeholders are involved II. mWater, A REGULATED MAS FOR THE EXCHANGE
in the market; (2) that stakeholders have different and OF WATER RIGHTS
frequently conflicting objectives; (3) that stakeholders In this paper we only sketch a bare-bones institutional
have decision-making capabilities; (4) that there is the framework that regiments the market and the main an-
possibility of establishing conventions that are applicable cillary activities. For the construction of that framework
to the actions of stakeholders, and that stakeholders are we follow the IIIA Electronic Institution (EI) conceptual
capable of complying with those conventions; (5) that model [1] where an institutional is specified through two
these stakeholders are autonomous to comply or not, main blocks: one that deals with ontological compo-
with the conventions. nents (the dialogical framework that specifies ontology,
With respect to demand we build on two assumptions. language, roles and information model) and another for
First, we assume that water use is granted to individual deontological components (the performative structure for
agents or to groups of individuals through water rights interaction models and procedural prescriptions and rules
that specify the amount of water, period and type of use of behavior for commitment-making conventions).
granted, as well as the location where that water may be We should mention that our framework captures those
extracted. Second, we assume that these rights may be conventions that are imposed by current legislation and
traded.1 become regimented in the market, but it also captures
1
new conventions to make the market agile and contract
The Spanish Water Law and its amendments —’Real Decreto
management realistic. Thus, for instance, we keep those
Legislativo 1/200, BOE 176’ and the initiatives approved in 2001,
2004 and 2007– institute tradable water rights and the creation of roles sanctioned by current legislation, but add those that
”water banks” during extreme draught conditions. make a richer market or affect conflicts. Likewise, we
2
keep the (totally ordered) seven types of water use, but Techniques for flexible on-demand individual and col-
specify a water right by a 5-tuple (location, basin district, lective negotiation among humans or non-human actors
use, volume, duration), and introduce the possibility of (i.e., agents and services). It is often the case that a water
splitting (i.e. trading parts) and joining (i.e. trade a right holder is motivated to achieve a goal (buy or sell a
combination) water rights. right) that is only possible by gaining the collaboration of
The procedural norms in mWater are specified through others (i.e., a federation of water right holders), then it
a nested performative structure. The top one, mWaterPS, is required to generate an explicit mutually acceptable
describes de overall market with five active scenes agreement through negotiation and to define detailed
and two sub-structures: TradingTablesPS and Agreement- workflows that regulate the activities and combinations
ManagementPS. Interactions in mWaterPS start with an of roles in the organization as well as their associated
Entitlement process through which an individual may data flow. mWater also requires models and techniques
become a rightful holder of a water right , followed by for judgement aggregation, argumentation, persuasion,
a process of Accreditation, that brings that right into normative reasoning and agreement planning.
the market. The third scene is a Trading Hall where Models for agreement conceptualization and patterns
traders are notified of upcoming negotiations and the specification, e-Contracting. Relations among different
reaching of agreements. Actual negotiations take place in agreements (sub-agreements), for example a situation in
the scenes that belong to TradingTablesPS and once an which in order to get a water right transfer a buyer
agreement on transfering a water right has been reached requires to contract a transportation resource from other
it is ”managed” according to the market conventions users.
captured in AgreementManagementPS. Two final scenes Techniques for initiation, coordination, and supervi-
take care of the (permanent) annulment and (temporary) sion of different forms of agreement, contracts and
suspension of rights. The TradingTablesPS includes a grievances. Even when water right agreements or con-
scene schema for each trading mechanism. Currently, tracts are signed, the behavior of the participating entities
a right-holder may opt for a standard double auction might not be completely determined as their autonomy
or a closed bid or face-to-face negotiation but other and selfishness might cause them not to honour their
mechanisms may be added as needed. AgreementMan- commitments if there is a potential gain in doing so.
agementPS works roughly as follows: First of all, when Online Dispute Resolution environments.
an agreement is reached, mWater staff checks if the An approach to summarize the life-cycle of agree-
agreement satisfies some formal conditions and if so, ments in order to build long-term relationships between
a transfer contract is signed. When a contract is active, the water rights market participants.
other right-holders and external stakeholders may initiate
a grievance procedure that impact the transfer agreement. IV. ACKNOWLEGEMENT
AgreementManagementPS includes different scenes to This paper was partially funded by the Consolider
address such grievances or for the disputes that may arise programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and In-
among co-signers. If things proceed smoothly, the right novation through project AT (CSD2007-0022, INGENIO
subsists until maturity. 2010).
III. R ESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES
R EFERENCES
mWater allows us to envision the following research
opportunities: [1] Josep Arcos, Marc Esteva, Pablo Noriega, Juan Rodriguez-
Aguilar, and Carles Sierra. Engineering open environments with
Organizational models that are dynamic and flexible electronic institutions. Engineering Applications of Artificial
enough to specify evolving regulated market scenarios. Intelligence, (18):191–204, 2005.
Because water’s unique characteristics, mWater requires [2] F. Martin de Santa Olalla, A. Dominguez, F. Ortega, A. Artigao,
and C. Fabeiro. Bayesian networks in planning a large aquifer in
organization structures that restrict the way agreements
eastern mancha, spain. Environmental Modelling and Software,
are reached by fixing the social structure of the partic- 22:1089–1100, 2007.
ipating entities, the capabilities of their roles and the [3] Juan A. Rodriguez-Aguilar. AGREEMENT TECHNOLOGIES.
relationships among them (e.g. power, authority). Towards a new programming paradigm for agent-oriented tech-
nologies. Position Statement at Future of Software Engineering
Reasoning about normative regulation and social and Multi-Agent Systems - FOSE-MAS 2008, 2008.
norms for negotiation and execution of agreements and [4] M. Thobani. Formal water markets: Why, when and how to
contracts. On and off-line, from an individual agent’s introduce tradable water rights. The World Bank Research
perspective and from the market design perspective. Observer, 12(2):161–179, 1997.
Dynamics of norms and norm adoption.