Modelling Southern Mesopotamia Irrigated Landscapes: How Small-scale Processes Could Contribute to Large-Scale Societal Development

Early Southern Mesopotamia shows a complex history of expansion of (irrigated) farming in relation to urban developments and changing landscapes. As a first step to study expanding irrigated farming system, an irrigation-related agent-based model was developed to explore farm(land)s and irrigation systems in relation to decision-making...

Modelling farmland dynamics in response to farmer decisions using an advanced irrigation-related agent-based model

Often, individual, communal, regional, or even national conflicts arise when water resources are shared and used. For equitable water-sharing strategies to be implemented, adequate collective action is required to allocate water – not limited to, but specifically in irrigation systems. In this research, we develop an Advanced Irrigation...

Conceptualising and Implementing an Agent-Based Model of an Irrigation System

The literature on irrigated agriculture is primarily concerned with irrigation techniques, irrigation water-use efficiency, and crop yields. How human and non-human agents co-shape(d) irrigation landscapes through their activities and how these actions impact long-term developments are less well studied. In this study, we aim to (1) explore...

Agent-based modelling to understand irrigated farmland dynamics and farmer decision-making

An Advanced Irrigation-Related Agent-Based Model (AIRABM) of farmers' decision-making mechanism and feedback among farmers is developed. The model explores the interactions among human and non-human agents in the irrigation system. In this paper, we discuss harvest patterns as they result from more equal or unequal water distribution in the...

Modelling human agency in ancient irrigation

Human activity is key in understanding ancient irrigation systems. Results of short term actions build up over time, affecting civilizations on larger temporal and spatial scales. Irrigation systems, with their many entities, social and physical, their many interactions within a changing environment and emergent properties, are typical examples...