Group-Model Building as part of participatory modelling in Benidorm

SIMTWIST (Simulating tourism water consumption with stakeholders) is a three-year European project that aims to inform tourism decision-makers about the effectiveness of a variety of measures to reduce tourism’s water consumption. The project aims to 1) estimate tourism’s share in current and future macro-level water scarcity in the Mediterranean, and 2) study and simulate water-related behaviour of tourism stakeholders at the micro-level. The project has two case-study areas: Benidorm and Rimini. For the tourism destination of Benidorm a significant amount of information is available on the water systems, but this information is fragmented and has not yet been combined into a systems conceptual framework.

This thesis project entails 1) analyze the information produced in an online workshop, 2) design a suitable online methodology for group model building with a group of stakeholders, 3) analyze team and social learning from the Group-Model Building workshop. The results of the thesis project will be part of an agent-based model.