An integration between Cognitive Map and Bayesian Belief Network for conflicts analysis in drought management

In the real world, environmental decision-making takes place in a highly interconnected environment, in which neither the decisional ramifications of a management action, nor the complexity of its impact, can be neglected. This contribution focuses on drought management. Due to the high complexity of drought impacts and the ambiguity in drought perceptions, different and often conflicting drought management strategies could be implemented by different actors. This, in turn, could have a strong negative impact on the effectiveness of drought mitigation strategies. Therefore, a deep conflict analysis and the definition of effective negotiation strategies could be really useful. In this work, a method based on the integration between Cognitive Map and Bayesian Belief Network is proposed to support the elicitation and the analysis of stakeholders perceptions of drought, and the conflicts analysis. The method was applied to support drought management in Trasimeno Lake (Umbria Region).