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12 Participatory Approaches 279

12.5 Combining Approaches and Techniques at Work

We present in this section two case studies implementing various methods for
joining social simulation modelling and participatory approaches. The first deals
with fire hazard prevention in southern France and the second one with groundwater
management in the atoll of Kiribati.

12.5.1 The Fire Hazard Case Study

In December 2005, the Forest Service of the Gard Department of Agriculture
(DDAF) decided to start a fire prevention campaign focussed on fire hazard at the
interface between urban and forest areas. Interested in the participatory approaches
developed by INRA researchers on fire prevention and forest management planning
(Étienne et al. 2003), they ask for an adaptation of the SylvoPast model to the peri-
urban context in order to make local politicians aware of the increasing fire hazard
problem. The district of Nîmes city (NM) who was already interested in the use
of role-playing games for empowering stakeholders and decision makers asked the
Ecodevelopment Unit of the INRA of Avignon to develop a companion modelling
approach based on social simulations and a participatory involvement of all the
mayors of the district.
The modelling process was subdivided into seven stages:
1. Collection and connection on a GIS of relevant cartographic data on forests,
land-use and urbanization and individual interviews with local extensionists on
farmers, foresters and property developers practices.
2. Co-construction with DDAF and NM of a virtual but implicit map representing
three villages typical from the northern area of Nîmes city and validation of the
map (shape, land-use attributes and scale) by a group of experts (EX) covering
the main activities of the territory (agriculture and livestock extensionists, forest
managers, hunting manager, land tenure regulator, fire brigade captain and town
planner).
3. Co-construction with NM, DDAF and experts of a conceptual model accounting
for the current functioning of the territory and the probable dynamic trends to
occur during the next 15 years. This participatory process followed the ARDI
methodology mentioned in Sect. 12.2.3 (Étienne 2006).
4. Implementation of the NimetFeu model on Cormas multi-agent platform by
INRA researchers and validation of the model by simulating with the co-
construction group, the current situation and its consequences on fire hazard and
landscape dynamics for the 15 following years.
5. Co-construction and test of a role-playing game (RPG) using the NimetFeu
model as a way to simulate automatically natural processes and some social
decisions (vineyard abandonment, horse herding, firefighting). The other social
decisions were programmed to be taken directly by the players and used as an
input to the model.