SIMULATING THE INTERACTION BETWEEN A SOCIETY AND A RENEWABLE RESOURCE

Abstract

Since a few years environmental studies have included human societies in the ecosystem in order to understand the interaction between the ecological and social dynamics and therefore there is a need to synthesize various scientific points of view. We have developed a simulator to represent both social, economic and ecological knowledge to contribute to a synthesis of the multidisciplinary knowledge of the Niger inland delta fishery. In this paper we present the simulator, and, in order to give a general outline of its use we present different experimentations. The architecture of the simulator is based on Distributed Artificial Intelligence principle (multi-agents simulations, blackboard architecture, object oriented language). We simulate an aquatic ecosystem submitted to an increase of the fishing effort and compare the effect of different representation of fishing effort. As a result of the simulations, focus can be put on the relation between space sharing rules and the evolution of the ecological equilibrium. The simulator is considered as a discussion tool to lead to interdisciplinary meetings.