WAG in AFROMAISON European project
Headwaters of the Blue Nile (Ethiopia)
Albertine Rift & Rwenzori Mountains (Uganda)
Inner Niger Delta (Mali)
The European project AFROMAISON "aims to propose concrete strategies for integrated natural resources management in Africa in order to adapt to the consequences of climate change". It "will propose sustainable solutions for communities and authorities in their operational management and strategic policy of natural (water) resources, and help them in their fight against climate change."
WAG team is involved in AFROMAISON as the coordinator of the operational framework of intervention in the project case studies. In eac h of these case studies, WAG applications will be developped and used as simulation platforms to test and discuss integrated / multi-scale strategies that are developped elsewhere in the project.
In each case study, a researcher or a student has been appointed as the responsible for the WAG application development of his / her case study.
The case studies
Oum Zessar Watershed (Tunisia)
Progress of the WAG action in AFROMAISON
The testing of strategies with a WAG simulation platform is one phase of AFROMAISON operationnal framework. We have defined an unified protocol for this phase that will be followed in each of the case studies.
This protocol will consist in :
0. developing the specific WAG development platform
1. defining test criteria for the strategies with the stakeholders
2. simulating a reference situation
3. simulating the implementation of a strategy
4. proposing an improved plan
5. conducing a global evaluation with the stakeholders
Step 0 will be conduced during a dedicated period of 3 months, between June and August of 2012.
It has been initiated with an intensive training session in Tunisia from May 29th to June 7th of 2012. During this training, each case study WAG responsible has been working on developping a first prototype.
During 6 weeks the WAG applications developpers will be back to their country. They will have to check and improve the simulation platform with "critical friends". What we call critical friends are local scientific, technical or lay experts that are not part of the stakeholders process but who are interested in it. The objective is that these "critical friends" correct and enrich the simulation platform with their expertise and perspectives so that at the end of July an improved prototype can be pre-tested with friends or students.
Then a second intensive training session will be held in Uganda from July 23rd to July 28th. The objective of this training session will be to finalize WAG simulation platforms that can be connected with the strategies and formalize their testing protocol.
Finally in August, formal tests of the simulation platform will be held, both with the critical friends and with stakeholders that are part of the main AFROMAISON stakeholder process. The objective is that a finalized simulation platform is available in September for moving to the next steps of the project and actually testing the strategies.
Check the following slides for complementary information on the protocol agenda an the critical friends process.
WAG and integrated participatory planning
Current and future research actions around Wat-A-Game are strongly related to the integration of role-playing game simulation platforms within participatory planning processes, and therefore specific developments of the WAG platform in relation with participatory planning. A first training session relating specifically WAG and participatory planning was held in Addis-Ababa in April 2012. Pictures and slides presented at this training can be found here. More research will be done during AFROMAISON project.