Emergent Properties of Irrigation Networks

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For centuries the Balinese have used an irrigation system controlled by temple priests to coordinate the water schedules of paddy rice farmers. The effectiveness of indigenously run irrigation systems has been questioned by social scientists and development planners in terms of whether they will permit the maximization of rice yields or the minimization of risk of failure. This project will help answer this question and potentially provide insights into how complex systems are simply and effectively coordinated. The research will evaluate the hypothesis that Balinese water temple networks are self-organizing managerial systems, a hitherto unknown form of complex adaptive system. It will also test whether computer simulation models can predict variations in the structure of temple networks. Previous research has enabled the investigators to build and test a predictive linear simulation model of the role of water temples in the management of the terraced rice field ecology. This project builds directly on that research, but shifts attention from the ecological role of individual water temples to possible system-level properties of temple networks. Models of coadaptation on rugged fitness landscapes will enable one to investigate emergent properties of temple networks under varying ecological conditions in a comparative study of five different river systems. The results of optimization analyses will yield models of the adaptive landscape of each river, which will then be compared to existing temple networks.