Collaborative Modeling for Decision Support in Water Resources: Principles and Best Practices

Collaborative Modeling for Decision Support integrates collaborative modeling with participatory processes to inform natural resources decisions. Practitioners and advocates claim that the approach will lead to better water management, balancing interests more effectively and reducing the likelihood of costly legal delays. These claims are easy to make, but the benefits will only be realized if the process is conducted effectively. To provide guidance for how to conduct an effective collaborative modeling process, a task committee cosponsored by the Environmental Water Resources Institute (EWRI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers and by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Institute for Water Resources developed a set of Principles and Best Practices for anyone who might convene or conduct collaborative modeling processes. The guidance is intended for both conflict resolution professionals and modelers, and our goal is to integrate these two fields in a way that will improve water resources planning and decision making. Here, the set of eight principles is presented along with a selection of associated best practices, illustrated by two different case examples