Drinking water security is a life safety issue as an adequate supply of safe water is essential for economic, social and sanitary reasons. Damage to any element of a water system, as well as corruption of resource quality, may have significant effects on the population it serves and on all other dependent resources and activities. As well as an analysis of the reliability of water distribution systems in ordinary conditions, it is also crucial to assess system vulnerability in the event of natural disasters and of malicious or accidental anthropogenic acts. The present work summarizes the initial results of research activities that are underway with the intention of developing a vulnerability assessment methodology for drinking water infrastructures subject to hazardous events. The main aim of the work was therefore to provide decision makers with an effective operational tool which could support them mainly to increase risk awareness and preparedness and, possibly, to ease emergency management. The proposed tool is based on Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN), a probabilistic methodology which has demonstrated outstanding potential to integrate a range of sources of knowledge, a great flexibility and the ability to handle in a mathematically sound way uncertainty due to data scarcity and/or limited knowledge of the system to be managed. The tool was implemented to analyze the vulnerability of two of the most important water supply systems in the Apulia region (southern Italy) which have been damaged in the past by natural hazards. As well as being useful for testing and improving the predictive capabilities of the methodology and for possibly modifying its structure and features, the case studies have also helped to underline its strengths and weaknesses. Particularly, the experiences carried out demonstrated how the

The increasing awareness of the complexity and uncertainty of environmental processes is changing therole of information production to support decision-making. Monitoring systems need to gather reliableinformation, adopting a multi-scale and integrated approach. Using exclusively technical monitoringmethods to collect the information could result in unsustainable monitoring costs. In order to minimize thecosts and to address the scale issue, the integration of local and technical knowledge is proposed in thiswork. For the implementation of this approach, a tool based on the use of fuzzy logic and geographicinformation system (GIS) technologies was developed. The willingness of the local community to participatein monitoring activitieswas ensured by keeping these activities as simple and close to local knowledgeas possible. The fuzzy GIS-based systemenhances both the comprehensibility of the local knowledge for thedecision-makers and its reliability, making it usable for the decision-making process. The tool was developedto support soil salinity monitoring in the lower Amudarya River Basin in Uzbekistan.

Management of water supply systems under shortage conditions due to drought requires computational tools able to relate the past precipitation regime over different time scales to future water resources availability. This work proposes a modelling framework to address the occurrence of shortage for water supply systems whose resource is constituted by natural or artificial reservoirs. The proposed methodology aims at identifying "management triggers" for possible mitigation measures. Emphasis is given on the use of standardized indices to promote information sharing. The implemented tool is structured into five modules: "hydrological" module; "scenarios" module; "reservoir" module; a module for the evaluation of "indices of shortage"; and a "support to early-warning" module. The whole procedure has been applied to three Italian reservoirs. For each water body, a case specific shortage early-warning system, based on standardized precipitation indices has been identified, allowing the implementation of efficient local mitigation measures.

Water management is a controversial environmental policy issue, due to the heterogeneity of interests associated with a shared resource and the increasing level of conflict among water uses and users. Nowadays, there is a cumulative interest in enhancing multi-stakeholder decision-making processes, overtaking binding mercantile business, in water management domain. This requires the development of dynamic decision-aiding tools able to integrate the different problem frames held by the decision makers, to clarify the differences, to support the creation of collaborative decision-making processes and to provide shared platforms of interactions. In literature, these issues are faced by concepts such as Ostrom's action arena and Ostanello-Tsoukiàs' interaction space (IS). The analysis of the interactions structure and of the different problem framing involved are fundamental premises for a successful debate for the management of a common-pool resource. Specifically, the present paper suggests a dynamic evolution of the IS, highlighting its criticalities. It develops an alternative perspective on the problem, using a System Dynamics Model (SDM), exploring how different actions can influence the decision-making processes of various stakeholders involved in the IS. The SDM has been implemented in a multi-stakeholders decision-making situation in order to support water management and groundwater protection in the agricultural systems in the Capitanata area (Apulia region, Southern Italy).

Differences in problem framing and understanding are unavoidable in multi-actor decision-making processes, deeming ambiguous problem definitions and actions. The presence of ambiguity may have diverse implications. On the one hand, a diversity in frames can enhance the co-production of knowledge offering opportunities for innovative solutions. On the other hand, the presence of ambiguity can be a source of discrepancies or conflict in a group, hampering the implementation and/or reducing the effectiveness of environmental policy. This work demonstrates that neglecting ambiguity in problem framing leads decision-actors to simplify the interaction space by ignoring the role of some of the other decision-actors and/or making wrong assumptions about their mental models. Moreover, they act as if the system is as simple as the decision-actors presume it to be. To demonstrate these hypotheses, a Causal Loop Diagram method was implemented to investigate the policy resistance mechanisms hampering the implementation of sustainable groundwater abstraction policy in the Apulia Region (Southern Italy).

The paper presents the preliminary results of a scientific initiative aiming at the definition and implementation of innovative management options to mitigate the environmental impacts of groundwater pumping in coastal aquifers. In fact seawater intrusion in such aquifers is very often caused by the over-exploitation of groundwater mainly due to the increasing water demand in the agricultural sector in the last decades in most semiarid or arid countries of the world. Consequently, the sustainable management of groundwater under the principles of transparent and efficient water use has highlighted the issue of measuring and accounting the water volumes withdrawn from the groundwater. The objective of the research activity is the design of an innovative monitoring system for sustainable groundwater exploitation. Such an ambitious target requires an accurate analysis of existent and potential stakeholders' conflicts. These conflicts are crucial for the implementation of strategies and activities by the different institutions that are involved in the management of water resources. Therefore, a central role in the development of the project is the stakeholder involvement, with particular emphasis on conflict assessment. In this work, conflicts analysis has concerned both the acceptability of groundwater protection measures and the feasibility of groundwater monitoring strategies.

In many arid and semi-arid regions agriculture is the main user of GW, causing problems with the quantity and quality of water, but there are few institutional policies and regulations governing sustainable GW exploitation. The authors suggest an integrated methodology for enabling local GW management, capable of combining the need for GW protection with socio-economic and behavioural determinants of GW use. In the proposed tool, integration is reinforced by the inclusion of multiple stakeholders, and the use of Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) to simulate and explore these stakeholders' attitude to GW exploitation and their responses to the introduction of new protection policies. BBNs and hydrological system properties are integrated in a GIS-based decision support system - GeSAP - which can elaborate and analyse scenarios concerning the pressure on GW due to exploitation for irrigation, and the effectiveness of protection policies, taking into account the level of consensus. In addition, the GIS interface makes it possible to spatialize the information and to investigate model results.The paper presents the results of an experimental application of the GeSAP tool to support GW planning and management in the Apulia Region (Southern Italy). To evaluate the actual usability of the GeSAP tool, case study applications were performed involving the main experts in GW protection and the regional decision-makers. Results showed that GeSAP can simulate farmers' behaviour concerning the selection of water sources for irrigation, allowing evaluation of the effectiveness of a wide range of strategies which impact water demand and consumption.

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).

A water allocation model at farm-scale was developed to interpret water allocation patterns in an intensive agriculturaldistrict of Southern Italy, supplied by groundwater and surface waters (from reservoir) with variable costs and distinctmanagement regimes. The model aims at evaluating the impact of farm-scale water costs on water resourcesmanagement and groundwater conservation at district scale. Semi-structured interviews were carried out involvinglocal stakeholders to define (i) the relationship between irrigation source selection and water tariff applied by theirrigation district, and (ii) the conjunctive use of groundwater based on water cost convenience. It was demonstratedthat farmers' choice depends on the ratio between volumetric water tariff and the groundwater pumping cost at farmscale.The results also demonstrated that a restrictive water tariff policy applied during drought periods produced anincrease in the groundwater use instead of reducing the water consumption. The model allowed to analyze the driversinfluencing farmers' behaviour, thus assessing the effectiveness of water protection policies, specifically those relatedto water tariff.

Evidences from flood risk management demonstrated that a deep understanding of the main physical phenomena to be addressed is often not enough but should be also integrated with stakeholders' knowledge and risk perception. Particularly, the effectiveness of flood risk management strategies is highly dependent on stakeholders' perception and attitudes, which play a critical role on how individuals and institutions act to mitigate risks. Furthermore, practitioners and policy-makers realized that grey infrastructures may not be the most suitable solution to reduce flood risk, and that a shift from grey solutions to Nature Based Solutions is required. Within this framework, the present work describes a methodology to enhance the Nature Based Solutions implementation by facilitating the generation, acquisition and diffusion of different stakeholders' risk perceptions. It is based on the combination of Problem Structuring Methods for the elicitation of stakeholders' risk perceptions through individual Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, and Ambiguity Analysis for the investigation of differences in risk perceptions and problem framing. The outputs of the Ambiguity Analysis, used during a participatory workshop, facilitated a dialogue aligning the divergences and promoting the social acceptance of Nature Based Solutions. These results of the implementation of this multi-step methodology in the Glin??ica river basin (Slovenia) are discussed.

A research study was conducted on a coastal irrigated agricultural area of southern Italy to assess the risks of aquifer degradation likely resulting from the intensive groundwater pumping from individual farm wells andreduced aquifer recharge. Information were collected both from farmers and delivery system's operators during a survey conducted in 2012 revealing that farmers depend mainly on groundwater with the aim to achieve flexible irrigation management as opposed to the rigid rotational delivery service of surface water supply provided by the local water management agency. The study area is intensively farmed by small land-holding growers with high-value micro-irrigated horticultural crops. Our team appraised the soil and aquifer degradation hazards using a simplified procedure for environmental risk assessment that allowed identifying the risk-generating processes, evaluating the magnitude of impacts, and estimating the overall risks significance. We also collected the stakeholders' perceptions on agricultural water management and use through field interviews, whereas parallel investigations revealed significant aquifer salinity increase during the recent years. As a final step, some preliminary risk mitigation options were appraised by exploring the growers' response to possible changes of irrigation deliveries by the water management agency. The present study integrated multi-annual observations, data interpretation, and modelling efforts, which jointly enabled the analysis of complex water management scenarios and the development of informed decisions.

Water resource management is often characterized by conflicts, as a result of the heterogeneity ofinterests associated with a shared resource. Many water conflicts arise on a global scale and, in particular,an increasing level of conflicts can be observed in the Mediterranean basin, characterized by waterscarcity. In the present work, in order to assist the conflict analysis process, and thus outline a propergroundwater management, stakeholders were involved in the process and suitable tools were used ina Mediterranean area (the Apulia region, in Italy). In particular, this paper seeks to elicit and structurefarmers' mental models influencing their decision over the main water source for irrigation. The morecrucial groundwater is for farmers' objectives, the more controversial is the groundwater protectionstrategy. Bayesian Belief Networks were developed to simulate farmers' behavior with regard togroundwater management and to assess the impacts of protection strategy. These results have been usedto calculate the conflict degree in the study area, derived from the introduction of policies for thereduction of groundwater exploitation for irrigation purposes. The less acceptable the policy is, the morelikely it is that conflict will develop between farmers and the Regional Authority. The results of conflictanalysis were also used to contribute to the debate concerning potential conflict mitigation measures.The approach adopted in this work has been discussed with a number of experts in groundwatermanagement policies and irrigation management, and its main strengths and weaknesses have beenidentified. Increasing awareness of the existence of potential conflicts and the need to deal with themcan be seen as an interesting initial shift in the Apulia region's water management regime, which is stillgrounded in merely technical approaches.

The availability and the quality of drinking water are key requirements for the well-being and the safety of a community, both in ordinary conditions and in case of disasters. Providing safe drinking water in emergency contributes to limit the intensity and the duration of crises, and is thus one of the main concerns for decision-makers, who operate under significant uncertainty. The present work proposes a Decision Support System for the emergency management of drinking water supply systems, integrating: i) a vulnerability assessment model based on Bayesian Belief Networks with the related uncertainty assessment model; ii) a model for impact, and related uncertainty assessment, based on Bayesian Belief Networks. The results of these models are jointly analyzed, providing decision-makers with a ranking of the priority of intervention. A GIS interface (G-Net) is developed to manage both input spatial information and results. The methodology is implemented in L'Aquila case study, discussing the potentialities associated to the use of the tool dealing with information and data uncertainty.

Water resources management is often characterized by conflicts in many arid and semi-arid regions, where agriculture is the main user of groundwater (GW). Conflicts could arise among different decision-makers and stakeholders. Moreover, different policies can interact each other hampering or facilitating their implementation and effectiveness. This contribution describes a new implementation of GeSAP, an integrated modelling tool for enabling local GW management by combining the need for GW protection with socio-economic and behavioural determinants of GW use. GeSAP is based on the involvement of multiple stakeholders and the use of Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) to simulate and explore their attitude relative to GW exploitation and their responses to the introduction of new protection and agricultural policies. In this work, GeSAP was implemented in the area of the Capitanata Irrigation Users Organization, located in the Apulia region (southern Italy). It was used to simulate the reactions of the main stakeholders involved in GW protection policy implementation and to assess the policy's effectiveness in terms of actual reduction of GW exploitation. Furthermore, the interactions between the GW protection policy and the coming reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was investigated. The results of the application proved the capability of the GeSAP tool to assess the actual effectiveness of GW protection policy by investigating how far this policy could be considered acceptable by farmers. In addition, this study demonstrates how the effectiveness of the GW protection policy could be affected by the interaction with the CAP reform. The latter could strongly impact the balance between water demand and availability with the effect of ifying the positive synergy between CAP and GW protection policy. Although water management issues are not explicitly mentioned among the main scopes of the CAP, this work clearly demonstrates the impact that such policy could have on farmers' decisions on water use

Empirical investigations in scientific literature have highlighted the differences between stakeholders' perceptions on the severity of a given drought phenomenon and on results out of scientific - technical evaluations. This means that there can be several perceptions over the phenomenon as well as different scientific models to be used in order to assess the drought's severity which itself does not consider such differences. Facing a drought phenomenon, stakeholders adopt different rnental models to assess its severity, taking into account additional elements, other than just water availability and climatic conditions. At turn, this could have a strong negative impact on the effectiveness of strategies for drought mitigation. In fact, if mitigation actions were selected without considering stakeholders' perceptions over the drought, then, the actions themselves would be considered as unsatisfactory by the stakeholders or, even worst, not acceptable at ali. If the degree of acceptability was low, then stakeholders would strongly hamper the implementation of mitigation actions. Therefore, an in depth analysis of potential conflicts and the definition of effective negotiation strategies should be useful. By this perspective, we propose a methodology based on a Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) to support the elicitation and the analysis of stakeholders' perceptions over the drought and the analysis of potential conflicts. The method has been applied to a drought management process in the area nearby the Trasimeno Lake (located in the Region of Umbria) in order to analyze potential conflict.

L'IRSA-CNR ha svolto attività di ricerca per la definizione di una metodologia di stima della vulnerabilità delle infrastrutture di approvvigionamento idropotabile, esposti a eventi calamitosi, nell'ambito di un Accordo quadro con il Dipartimento Nazionale della Protezione Civile. Tale stima viene effettuata in maniera probabilistica con una modellistica basata sulle reti Bayesiane (BBNs), in funzione delle caratteristiche strutturali, ambientali ed operative degli elementi. La metodologia si traduce in un sistema di supporto alle decisioni (DSS) capace di integrare e gestire le informazioni disponibili, per fornire ai decisori indicazioni sulle procedure da adottare nella gestione di reti acquedottistiche in emergenza. Nell'ambito del DSS è stato realizzato il tool G-Net, che aggiunge la componente GIS con la duplice funzione di elaborare i dati di input per il modello di vulnerabilità (gestito dal sw Netica(TM)) e di visualizzare i risultati in termini di cartografia. È stato sviluppato in Python in modalità loosely-coupled con Netica, per fornire una dimensione spaziale al DSS e migliorarne l'efficacia. La preparazione dei dati di input del modello prevede una caratterizzazione completa degli elementi dell'infrastruttura, ottenuta mediante analisi spaziale utilizzando interfacce personalizzate che ne automatizzano la procedura. G-Net è stato testato in vari casi di studio esposti a calamità (ad es. L'Aquila).

Cities are highly dynamic systems, whose resilience is affected by the interconnectedness between "hard" and "soft" infrastructures. "Hard infrastructures" are the functional networks with physical elements providing goods or services. "Soft infrastructures" (culture, governance, and social patterns) encompass the social networks, make the hard infrastructures work, and are vital for understanding the consequences of disasters and the effectiveness of emergency management. Although the dynamic interactions between such infrastructures are highly complex in the case of the occurrence of hazardous events, it is fundamental to analyze them. The reliability of hard infrastructures during emergency management contributes to keep alive the social capital, while the community, its networks, and its own resilience influence the service provided by infrastructural systems. Resilience-thinking frameworks overcome the limits of the traditional engineering-oriented approaches, accounting for complexity of socio-technical-organizational networks, bridging the static and dynamic components of disasters across pre- and postevent contexts. The present work develops an integrated approach to operatively assess resilience for the hard and soft infrastructural systems, aiming at modeling the complexity of their interaction by adopting a graph theory-based approach and social network analysis. The developed approach has been experimentally implemented for assessing the integrated resilience of the hard/soft infrastructures during the L'Aquila 2009 earthquake.

The role of monitoring is changing due to the increasing awareness of complexity and uncertainty in environmental resources management. Monitoring systems are required to support critical reflection about the effectiveness of actions toward the achievement of management objectives. To this aim, monitoring should be based on a strong integrated and multi-scale approach. Monitoring costs could be prohibitive if the monitoring is only based on traditional scientific methods of measurements. To deal with these issues, the design of an innovative monitoring system should be based on the integration between different sources of knowledge and information. In this work the usability of local knowledge to support environmental monitoring is investigated. A multi-step participatory monitoring design process has been implemented aiming to design a program for soil salinity monitoring in the lower Amudarya river basin in Uzbekistan. Although there is an increasing awareness of the importance of stakeholders being involved in decision processes, the current socio - cultural and institutional context is not favourable to the participatory approach. The choice of method to be implemented in this work was influenced by such conditions. The analysis of the lessons learned from the experiences gained in this project revealed some important clues concerning the development of a locally-based monitoring program. These lessons can be subdivided according to three fundamental issues: the long term involvement of local community members in monitoring activities, the acceptance of locally-based monitoring systems by decision makers, and the reliability of monitoring information.

According to the Hyogo Framework for Action, increasing resilience todrought requires the development of a people-centered monitoring and early warningsystem, or in other words, a system capable of providing useful and understandableinformation to the community at risk. To achieve this objective, it is crucial to negotiate acredible and legitimate knowledge system, which should include both expert and localknowledge. Although several benefits can be obtained, the integration of local and scientificknowledge to support drought monitoring is still far from being the standard indrought monitoring and early warning. This is due to many reasons, that is, the reciprocalskepticism of local communities and decision makers, and the limits in the capacity tounderstand and assess the complex web of drought impacts. This work describes amethodology based on the sequential implementation of Cognitive Mapping and BayesianBelief Networks to collect, structure and analyze stakeholders' perceptions of droughtimpacts. The methodology was applied to analyze drought impacts at Lake Trasimeno(central Italy). A set of drought indicators was developed based on stakeholders' perceptions.A validation phase was carried out comparing the perceived indicators of droughtand the physical indicators (i.e., Standard Precipitation Index and the level of the lake).Some preliminary conclusions were drawn concerning the reliability of local knowledge tosupport drought monitoring and early warning.

This paper presents results from a research and modelling work conducted on an irrigated agricultural area of southern Italy to assess the risks of soil and aquifer degradation occurring as indirect consequence of poor irrigation delivery performance by a water supply system. The area is intensively farmed with high-value market-oriented horticulture by small land-holding growers, and is equipped with a gravity-fed piped irrigation delivery system managed by a local Water Users Organization. Investigations revealed significant aquifer salinity increase from winter to summer months, likely due to intensive groundwater pumping by farmers during peak irrigation demand periods, even though surface water is available to growers from the collective delivery system. Phenomena of seawater intrusion were documented by several research campaigns conducted on the study area in the last decades, as resulting from mining of the coastal aquifer for irrigation and touristic purposes. The environmental hazards of aquifer and soils degradation were appraised through the use of a simplified Risk Assessment procedure, identifying the risk-generating processes and assessing the overall risks significance. The stakeholders' perspective was collected through interviews to growers and delivery system operators, and used to support the risk assessment procedure. Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) were developed and used to simulate the groundwater exploitation attitude of farmers versus water withdrawals from the collective delivery network. Some risk mitigation options were identified using dynamic analysis of FCMs to explore the likely reaction of growers' behavior in response to possible changes. Overall, the modelling tools proved to be useful in supporting public participation and representing the knowledge domain of stakeholders in making decision about water resources access, use and management.

The present work describes a model developed to interpret water allocation patterns in an intensive agricultural district of Southern Italy, supplied both by groundwater (at farm-scale) and surface water (managed by a local authority) with variable costs and specific operation. The model aims at evaluating the impact of some drivers (mainly the water cost) on water resources management and groundwater conservation at the district scale. The model is part of a Decision Support System (DSS) developed to investigate the main dynamics in an agricultural district, integrating in a model based on System Dynamics specific sub-modules (e.g. Crop Water Demand, Surface Reservoir Balance, Groundwater Balance and Farmers' Behavioural Model). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with local stakeholders in order to define (i) the relationship between the irrigation source selection and the water tariff applied in the irrigation district, and (ii) the selection of groundwater, based on cost, to fulfil the irrigation needs. The volumes from surface water were evaluated during the model calibration phase according to the expected irrigation needs, and found to be significantly correlated to the water stock in the reservoir well before the start of the irrigation season. The validation phase showed a good agreement between measured and simulated reservoir irrigation uptakes in the period 2000-2012. It was mainly shown that the preference for a water source depends mainly on the ratio between the surface water tariff and the groundwater pumping cost at farm-scale. The results also demonstrated that a restrictive water tariff policy applied during drought periods produced a marked increase in the groundwater use instead of reducing the water-irrigation consumption. Globally the model allows to better describe the drivers influencing farmers' behaviour and, thus, supports assessing the impacts of water policies, such as those related to water tariff.

There is growing awareness that fast response to emergency situation requires effective coordination among several institutional and non-institutional actors. The most common approaches, based on innovating technologies for information collection and management, are not sufficient to cope with the increasing complexity of emergency management. This work demonstrates that effective cooperation claims for a shift from information management to interaction management. Therefore, methods and tools are required in order to better understand the complexity of the interactions taking place during an emergency, and to analyse the actual roles and responsibilities of the different actors. This paper details the design and implementation of an integrated approach aiming to unravel the complexity of the interaction network based on Storytelling, the Problem Structuring Method, and Social Network Analysis. The potential of the integrated approach has been investigated in the Lorca (Spain) flood risk management case study. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Participatory research has in recent years become a popular approach for problem-oriented scientific research that aims to tackle complex problems in a real management context. The EU project NeWater placed a strong emphasis on participatory research to analyze the water management regimes in its seven case studies, identify barriers and opportunities for a change of current practices towards adaptive water management and develop and apply suitable tools to support a transition. The Uzbek part of the Amudarya river basin was one of its case studies. However, given the current political and cultural context in Uzbekistan which allows little room for stakeholder participation the extent to which participation could be realized here was unclear. In this paper we present an evaluation of the participatory research carried out in the Amudarya case study with respect to (i) the choice and application of different participatory methods, and their adaptation to the given political, socio-economic and cultural environment, (ii) their usefulness for the improvement of system understanding and the development of strategies and measures to improve water management and monitoring, and (iii) their acceptance and suitability for enhancing policy-making processes in the Amudarya river basin context. The main lessons learned from the comparison of the different participatory methods were: 1) the stakeholder process provided an opportunity for meetings and discussions among stakeholders from different organizational levels and thus promoted communication between different levels and organizations; 2) there is a danger of raising expectations that a research project cannot meet, e.g. of transferring local interests to higher levels, when initiating a participatory process in a context where most stakeholders are not generally involved in policymaking. Our experience shows that in order to chose and adapt participatory methods to the Uzbek cultural and political setting, and most likely this applies to other post-Soviet transition countries as well, four aspects should be taken into account: the time required to prepare and apply the method, good information about the participants and the context in which the method will be applied, knowledge of the local language(s), and careful training of local moderators. While these are aspects that are relevant to any application of participatory methods, they become even more important in a political and socio-cultural setting such as found in Uzbekistan. The extent to which those issues are relevant for a given method depends on the method itself.A four year research project can only provide a few illustrative examples of the usefulness of participation for system assessment in the river basin. However, the activities have built capacity with local scientists and practitioners for further application of those methods, which we consider a crucial aspect of the participatory research process. Overall, the application of