Application of belief networks to water management studies

Considerable effort has gone into studying the technical, social, economic and institutional constraints on improving water management in irrigated and rainfed farming systems. Although advances have been made, it can be argued that better progress could have been achieved if more water management studies had involved interdisciplinary data analysis. Such an integrated approach has been hampered primarily by the lack of a mathematical framework that facilitates interdisciplinary data capture and analysis. Belief and decision networks can provide this framework, allowing a simple, integrated methodology for the modelling of complex systems. This paper provides examples of the application of belief and decision networks to specific water management studies in Zimbabwe and Mauritius. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.