Abstract
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Water development projects often fail, which represents a poor outcome given the limited progress
against the Millennium Development Goals in providing people with adequate water and sanitation
services. This may not be surprising given that water management has been identified as being in the
complex system domain. According to the Cynefin framework, many traditional approaches are not
suitable; but it suggests an approach based on the methods of probe, sense and respond. In line with
this general framework, a participatory assessment methodology has been used to explore experiences
in the atoll town of Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati. After framing the case study, information was
collected providing multiple perspectives and these include narrative sources. When reviewing
previous experiences, project implementations are seen as probes or disturbances to the system from
which patterns of behaviour can be sensed. For this purpose, the critical factors leading to success or
failure are described using network representations. These are then used to inductively sense system
patterns, and the conclusions thereupon reinforce key recommendations in a recent United Nations
report. Additionally, the findings in this paper feed into a larger study where Agent-based simulation
and Bayesian networks are used in a participatory setting for integrated assessments.