The Institute of Water Policy has established a research, education, and public outreach project to disseminate the use of system dynamics (SD) modeling as a tool for doing integrative public policy analysis. One of the initial components of this project is to develop a series of country-level system dynamics water models, beginning with Singapore, with the intent of supporting regional decision-makers responsible for water policy and management. IWP envisions expanding these models to incorporate food, energy, and climate to simulate reciprocal effects among these sectors and water use.

Since there are numerous benefits to adopting a system dynamics approach in policy analysis and formulation and the uptake of this method has been limited within ASEAN countries, IWP anticipates immense opportunities to collaborate with partners to promote the use of this analytical technique. IWP is also exploring collaborative research projects with overseas institutions in this area to adopt a “stakeholder-driven” modeling approach, involving active participation from interested clients in the government and private sector.

Through use of a system dynamics modeling approach, IWP expects that policy-makers will gain a more systemic and holistic view of the factors affecting water quantity and quality to foster the implementation of more robust policies. Consequently, models with predictive capabilities, such as SD models, enable stakeholders to forecast and plan for future needs. Given the integrative nature of SD, IWP anticipates this modeling project will also reveal the importance of cross-ministry collaboration to solve problems that would insufficiently be handled within a single department