Complex systems simulations can support collaborative water planning by allowing stakeholders to jointly see hidden effects of land- and water-use decisions on groundwater flow. We adopted a participatory modeling progression where stakeholders learned to modify and use increasingly sophisticated models to assess policy impacts on groundwater levels. Stakeholders' shared understanding of the problem and the novelty, concreteness, and richness of proposed solutions evolved alongside the models’ degree of realism, but up to a certain point. More realistic models became a distraction and stymied efforts to plan for water shortages. The reflective learning required to plan for complex environmental problems is best supported by models that strike a balance between representational fidelity and end-user intelligibility. Complicated models and high-resolution data may overwhelm model users, preventing them from acting on the useful planning insights they derived from the exploratory modeling, particularly within social contexts that exhibit strong power dynamics and favor prediction.

复杂的系统模拟可以通过允许利益相关者共同看到土地和用水决策对地下水流量的隐藏影响来支持协作水规划。我们采用了参与式建模进程，利益相关者学会修改和使用越来越复杂的模型来评估政策对地下水位的影响。利益相关者对问题的共同理解以及所提出解决方案的新颖性、具体性和丰富性随着模型的现实程度而发展，但达到了一定程度。更现实的模型会分散注意力并阻碍计划水资源短缺的努力。计划复杂环境问题所需的反思性学习最好由在表征保真度和最终用户可理解性之间取得平衡的模型提供支持。