Generating Policy Recommendations for Sustainable Water Use in Complex
Scenarios: An Agent-Based Model Addressing Temporal and Spatial
Interaction, Heterogeneity, and Uncertainty in Monroe County, Michigan
Moira Zellner
Urban Planning

Water is an essential resource for all human activities, from the
basic physiological needs to industrial and agricultural
production. As populations have grown, however, water allocation has
become increasingly problematic. Controversies have arisen due to the
uncertainty in the dynamics of surface and groundwater systems, the
difficulty restricting access to the systems, the associated land use
processes, and the multiple layers of decision-making and scales of
interest. Generating appropriate policies for water management is
elusive in such scenarios, but policy-making may be improved through
the use of analytical frameworks that explicitly address the
complexities of water systems. This dissertation will develop a model
that will serve as such a framework to better understand the causes of
conflict in water allocation and to test the effectiveness of various
policies in securing long-term water availability in Monroe County,
Michigan, whose dropping groundwater levels have raised considerable
concern.