Agent-Based Modeling for Sustainable Development

Organizers: Carlo Jaeger, Kristian Lindgren, Aida Abdulah, and Claes Andersson with the help of the European Centre for Living Technology (ECLT) in Venice


The workshop will offer the opportunity to exchange experiences with advanced multi-agent modeling techniques and to think together about their application to practical problems, in particular the relation between climate policy and the global financial crisis.

Accommodation is organized and covered by the organizers unless agreed otherwise. Requests for support for travel costs can be submitted to the organizers, who will decide on the basis of a necessarily imperfect need assessment and budget limitations. Participation must be confirmed to no later than March 15.

The workshop will be based on written inputs that can be submitted by any participant. Inputs shall be submitted as pdf files to no later than March 20 and shall not exceed 7 pages in length. Inputs will be sent via e-mail to all participants no later than March 31. The organizers reserve the right not to send around inputs they do not consider appropriate for this workshop, but they will do so only as an exception. Participants are requested to read the inputs in advance, so that the workshop can provide an exceptional opportunity for exchange and joint thinking.

 
Background of the workshop

In their landmark review on ”Governing Social-Ecological Systems” (Handbook of Compu¬tational Economics, vol. 2), Marco Jansen and Elinor Ostrom state: ”Empirical studies from laboratory experiments and field work have challenged the predictions of the conventional model of the selfish rational agent for common pool resources and public-good games. Agent-based models have been used to test alternative models of decision-making which are more in line with the empirical record. Those models include bounded rationality, other regarding preferences and heterogeneity among the attributes of agents. Uncertainty and incomplete knowledge are directly related to the study of governance of social-ecological systems.”

Multi-agent models, therefore, hold promise for inquiries about the challenges of sustainable development, including climate change, poverty reduction, and financial stability. However, there are several problems that need to be solved in order to model choices and decisions made by agents. In particular, it seems quite difficult to represent  the functioning of market prices in multi-agent models in ways that are at least as convincing as those provided by the familiar framework of supply and demand. Also, as is evident from studying human behaviour, decisions made on the basis of non-economic considerations need to be included in the agent mechanisms.

Against this backdrop, there is an urgent need to explore how agent behavior can be rendered so as to realistically reflect empirically verifiable phenomena. For example, the possibilities of integrating plausible price mechanisms in multi-agent models for sustainable development will be explored. This is the task of the present workshop.

The workshop shall discuss the following issues:
•    Strengths and weaknesses of the supply and demand framework: examples, challenges and alternatives
•    Practical relevance of price vs. non-price policies for sustainability
•    Empirical, theoretical and computational aspects of modeling agent behavior

Each point shall be introduced by at least one briefing note and discussed sequentially over the two days of the workshop. If the need arises, during the workshop parallel groups shall be formed to look carefully into technical details of the topics under discussion.

The workshop is one of the activities within the GSD coordination action, and it is designed as a contribution to a research process that has taken shape over three events in the last three months of 2008:
•    OECD Global Science Forum on Applications of Complexity Science for Public Policy (Erice, 5-7 October 2008),
•    ”Towards the next generation of climate policy models” (Berlin, 14 November 2008)
•    Dahlem Conference ”Is there a mathematics of social entities” (Berlin, 14-19 December 2008).

The process shall be consolidated with further meetings (e.g., in Beijing, 10-11 May, 2009) and a suite of research projects. While the single steps undertaken shall be modest, the overall ambition cannot be denied: to produce a generation of models allowing to identify major policy options for sustainable development that remain hidden to the class of models currently in use.  
 

 Agenda

Thursday, April 2:

10:30    Welcome
    Prof. Kristian Lindgren, Chalmers University, Göteborg, Sweden

1. Empirical, theoretical and computational aspects of modeling agent behavior

10:45    Introduction to the debate
    John Finnigan, CSIRO Centre for Complex System Science
11:15    Open debate on the basis of pre-distributed documents

13:30    Lunch

2. Strengths and weaknesses of the supply and demand framework: examples, challenges and alternatives

15:00    Introduction to the debate
    Steve DeCanio, University of California Santa Barbara
15:30    Open debate on the basis of pre-distributed documents
17:00    Computing bazar – informal exchanges of simulations, code, documents, etc.

20:00    Workshop dinner

Friday, April 3:

09:30    Wrap up of first day rapporteurs
10:15    Debate continued
11:30    Coffee break

3. Practical relevance of price vs. non-price policies for sustainability

12:00    Introduction to the debate
Carlo Jaeger, ECF chair
12:30    Open debate on the basis of pre-distributed documents

13:30    Lunch

15:00    Debate continued
16:00    Break

16:30    Wrap up of first two days with input from rapporteurs
    Moderated by Carlo Jaeger
17:30    End of Workshop

 

 

 http://www.globalsystemdynamics.eu/index.php?id=events