FAQ - How to represent ... with WAG ?
This section is open to everyone's questions and propositions about representing particular phenomena or issues with WAG. Some questions are still open.
Please feel free to post in comments so that we can incorporate new elements in the FAQ and have WAG collectively enhanced.
Physical Phenomenoms
How to represent pollution ?
Pollution is a phenomenon that have been incorporated in WAG since the earliest version.
Colored water tokens are used to represent pollution.
Pollution is generated by activties : an activity needs a quantity of water tokens and returns a quantity of polluted water tokens.
The simplest is to consider tha t all water returned by activies is polluted.
It is possible to consider that activities return a mix of clean and polluted water but it means 1 more
parameter to calibrate for each activity. Pollution may be just used as an indicator for the state of the river but it is also possible to define a level of sensitivity to pollut ion for the activities by defining how many clean water tokens are needed among the total water need.
How to represent floods ?
This is still an open issue !
How to represent sedimentation ?
A prototype representing a sedimentation issue in the Kossou dam was developed by participants during a training course in Niamey in January 2010.
Sediments were represented as a kind of token. Each possible land use was generating a given quantity of sediment (table on first picture, plots with generated sediments third picture). Then the dam was represented as a grid with each cell having a capacity of 1 water token. When a sediment come to the dam it fills 1 cell and so the capacity of the dam decreases.
How to represent aquifers recharge ?
This is still an open issue !
Social or political aspects
How to represent non financial returns ?
We represent non financial return in WAG by using another kind of resource than money. We've called this resource well-being, social satisfaction, labour.
We've represented it with smileys and angries or with resource tokens of different colours.
We've been using different rules for this resource and now we tend to represent it just as another kind of resource which is integrated in costs and returns.
We've been usig until 3 kinds of resource (financial, labour, knowledge) and we tend to stabilize to 2 types (financial, non financial)
< images to be added >
Is it useful to represent non financial returns ?
This is still an open issue!
How to represent non material and uncertain impacts for actions such as information / sensibilisation?
This is still and open issue!
How to represent subsidies ?
Subsidies could be represented :
through an annual resource allowance (fixed or relative to number of LPCs for instance)
to be given by the manager as part of his role.
... ?
How to represent objectives such reelection (mayor) or clients satisfaction (tourism)
Objectives such as reelection or clients satisfaction could be represented :
through an objective in terms of annual or final non financial resource quantity
... ?
Interactions between sectors
How to represent roles or activities having stakes on other roles’ area ?
Think about the case of secondary residences which are having landscape and general environment stakes on agriculture and city area.
An idea is to represent it using common use sectors where activities of different roles can be in spatial concurrence.
How to represent returns for activities which achievement depends on how well the catchment is going (tourism for instance) ?
Activities which achievement depens on the state of the catchment could be represented by:
special rules for the activity but it could be difficult to manage
scenario on touristic frequentation just as there is a scenario on climate
events conditioned on cacthment indicators and impacting on activities linked to tourism