mWater is a software demonstrator developed in the Agreement Technologies Project. It is a Multi-Agent System (MAS) application that implements a market for water rights, including the model and simulation of the water-right market itself, the basin, users, protocols, norms and grievance situations.
mWater is motivated due to the fact that water scarcity is becoming a major concern in most countries, not only because it threatens the economic viability of current agricultural practices, but because it is likely to alter an already precarious balance among its different types of use.
In hydrological terms, a water market can be defined as an institutional, decentralized framework where users with water rights (right holders) are allowed to voluntarily trade them, always fulfilling some pre-established norms, to other users in exchange of some compensation, economic or not. And an institutional framework such as mWater, where water rights may be exchanged more freely and not only under exceptional conditions, leads to a more efficient use of water.