Sharing the local knowledge of water technologies through multi-agent indexing systems

Many research debates are recently facing the role of technologies in boosting community development through the raising of agents’ knowledge. As a matter of facts, only capital-intensive technologies have increasingly dominated throughout centuries, with wide and large impacts over populated areas. However, during the last couple of decades, many social, financial, environmental concerns have spread dramatically overall. Consequently, a new interest has been placed on low-impact, local and small-scale technologies, challenging large technologies with significant outcomes. The abilities and knowledge of local populations represent the critical value added of such small technologies. Being local-based, they are intrinsically unprovided with formal methodologies and technical language, so fatally inducing poor levels of knowledge sharing and generalization. Yet the usefulness of local-based technologies is increasingly coming out, often succeeding where more formal technologies had previously failed. ANTINOMOS project aims at creating a real learning environment for the mutual, shared generation of knowledge. This subject is discussed in the present paper with a cross-disciplinary, cross-scale, multi-agent approach, considering the different forms of local knowledge and language involved.