Decision Support Models to Assist International and Transboundary Water Negotiations

Mohammadreza Shahbazbegian is an Associate Professor at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, where he specializes in system dynamics and transboundary water management. He has introduced several innovative concepts, such as the Hydropolitical Self-Organization theory, Hydropolitical System Archetypes, Negotiable Water, and Painted Water. His research primarily examines water conflict analysis, focusing on system archetypes within international river basins, including the Helmand, Euphrates, Tigris, Nile, and Zambezi. He has been serving as the Principal Investigator for numerous national and international collaborative research projects related to the subject of the book. He is the founder and the CEO of the Iranian Water Diplomacy Association, which has grown to include over 300 members from various scientific disciplines in Iran. Currently, he serves as an observer member on the managing committee of the Blue Peace Middle East initiative, which is supported bythe Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Additionally, he is the scientific director of the hydropolitical advanced study group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in IranAriel Dinar is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Environmental Economics and Policy in the School of Public Policy and Professor of the Graduate Division at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). His work addresses economic and strategic behavior associated with management of water and the environment. Dr Dinar worked at the World Bank on water and climate change economics and policy. In 2008, Dr Dinar assumed a professorship at UCR and founded and directed the Water Science and Policy Center. He has been a Fulbright Senior Specialist since 2003 and was named a 2015 Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

• Foreword by Aaron Wolf1: Ariel Dinar, Mohammadreza Shahbazbegian, and Alexandra Turgul: Needs for and Use of Decision Support Models in International Water Negotiations2: Ernest Thiessen, Carissa Boynton, and Graham Ross: A Methodological Simulation Using Smartsettle Infinity for Negotiating Transboundary Water Disputes3: Mohammadreza Shahbazbegian and Ariel Dinar: A Painted Water Theory to Equip International Transboundary Basins Decision Support Models with Future Negotiation Vision4: Jacques Ganoulis and Charalampos Skoulikaris: Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis and the Eristic-Dialectical Model for Conflict Resolution in Transboundary Water Resources Management5: Najibullah Loodin, Gabriel E. Eckstein, Vijay P. Singh, Rosario Sanchez and Robert E. Mace: Conceptualizing Trust Using the Helmand River as an Example: A Cost-Benefit Decision-Making Framework6: Raya Marina Stephan: Decision Support Models Under International Water Law7: Mohammadreza Shahbazbegian, Anthony Turton and Ismail Najafi: An Interdisciplinary Decision Support Model Based on System Dynamics to Reach Consensus-Building in the Helmand/Hirmand Transboundary River8: Daniel Crespo, Mehdi Nemati, Ariel Dinar, Zachary Frankel, and Nickolas Halberg: Developing a Decision Support Model to Assess the Value of Cooperation Benefits Under Climate Change: Case of the Colorado River Basin in the United States9: Mahmoud Radwan, Nidhi Nagabhatla, and Padmi Ranasinghe: Enhancing Transboundary Water Security via a Participatory Negotiation Support Framework: Spotlight on the Congo Basin10: Mohammadreza Shahbazbegian, and Ariel Dinar: Ways Forward to Employ Decision Support Models in International Water Negotiations