Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Combined Abm-Ca Approach For Analysing Effects Of Peer-Influence And Landowner Decision- Making On Urban Development Patterns, J. Koch, M. A. Dorning, S. M. Beck, G. M. Sanchez, A. Shashidharan, L. S. Smart, J. W. Smith, D. B. Van Berkel, Q. Zhang, R. K. Meentemeyer

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In many parts of the U.S., population growth combined with continued demand for low-density housing is transforming the structure of peri-urban landscapes. Despite the substantial amount of privately owned land, the important decision-making roles that individual landowners play in shaping patterns of urbanization and landscape change is understudied. We introduce a data-informed simulation model developed to analyse the decision-making processes that determine spatial characteristics of fragmentation in peri-urban areas by combining the utility of a cellular automata urban growth algorithm (CA module), based on the FUTURES model, with an agent-based model (ABM module). The CA module is conceptualized as a …

Implementing Urine Patches In A Dynamic Process- Based Simulation Model, V. O. Snow, R. Cichota, N. J. Hutchings, J. Vejlin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Grazing ruminants harvest N from pasture in the entire paddock and then deposit between 40 and 80% of the ingested N into urine patches that cover only 2-4% of the paddock area during a typical rotational grazing event. While previous work has shown the importance of explicitly modelling these patches of very high N deposition, most process-based simulation models assume uniform return of N to the soil. The very few models that explicitly model urine patches within the paddock do so at significant, perhaps prohibitive, computational cost. We sought a solution that would preserve the most important biophysical effects but …

Agrodb – Integration Of Database Management Systems With Crop Models, Alexandre Tagliari Lazzaretti, José Maurício C. Fernandes, Willingthon Pavan, Josué Toebe, Roberto Wiest

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The usefulness of crop simulation models for understanding and transferring agricultural technology is widely acknowledged. The decision support system for agrotechnology transfer (DSSAT) has been in use for the last 3 decades by researchers worldwide. The DSSAT-Cropping System Model (CSM) is a general model for simulating crop growth and development, as well as the soil and plant water, nitrogen phosphorus, and carbon dynamics. The DSSAT-CSM comprises a suite of crop simulation models, including the CSM-CROPSIM wheat. However, depending on the type and number of simulations, it is usually necessary to handle large volumes of input and output data. A database …

Natural Resource Use In Smallholder Environments – Model Tailoring To Reach The Right People, Carsten Marohn, Georg Cadisch

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Our contribution describes challenges encountered during the development of the Land Use Change Impact Assessment tool (LUCIA) from a pure research instrument to a more applied tool and possible ways forward. LUCIA is a dynamic, spatially explicit landscape-scale model. Its scope is assessing impacts of land use change and management on soil productivity and fertility, biomass production, watershed functions and environmental services in small catchments emphasizing processes connecting different parts of landscapes. Over time the original target group – researchers – expanded to farmers, students and authorities. Main motivations for model use included a) plot level yield estimates, fertiliser recommendations; …

The Stability And Ecophysiological Realism Of Calibrated Parameters In A Detailed Vegetation Model (Waves), R. W. Vervoort, J. D. Henry, M. Gharun, M. A. Adams

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

WAVES is a daily time-step one-dimensional vegetation, water and energy transfer model that has been used extensively across Australia (and globally) to simulate ecohydrological processes. In particular it has been used extensively for assessing future recharge under climate change. A literature review suggests parameter values from the user manual are most commonly used in research. This suggests that further investigation into the stability and equifinality of the parameters might be warranted, specifically since the model is used for scenario studies. This study made use of an extensive sapflow and soil moisture data set for 7 tree vegetation sites in the …

Designing Mixed Fruit-Vegetable Cropping Systems By Integer Quadratic Programming, Sara Maqrot, Simon De Givry, Gauthier Quesnel, Marc Tchamitchian

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Mixed fruit-vegetable cropping systems (MFVCS) are a promising way of ensuring environmentally sustainable agricultural production systems in response to the challenge of being able to fulfill local market requirements. Indeed, they combine productions and they also make a better use of biodiversity. These agroforestry systems are based on a complex set of interactions modifying the utilization of light, water and nutrients. Thus, designing such a system must optimize the use of these resources, by maximizing positive interactions (facilitation) and minimizing negative ones (competition). To attain these objectives, the system's design has to include the spatial and temporal dimensions of these …

M3o: A Matlab Toolbox For Designing Multi-Objective Optimal Operations Of Water Reservoir Systems, M. Giuliani, Y. Li, A. Cominola, S. Denaro, E. Mason, A. Castelleti

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water reservoir operations have huge potential for contributing positively to the development of different sectors, as well as for reducing the vulnerabilities of water systems caused by changing hydro-climatic and socio-economic forcing. Despite the problem of optimally designing operating policies for water storages has been extensively studied, many state-of-the-art methods are generally distributed as commercial software, thus constraining the possibility of exploring or modifying these tools for customized applications. This motivates the search for advanced, flexible, and open tools supporting the design of operating policies capable of meeting the multiple competing demands associated to the operations of water storages. In …

An Integrated Modelling Approach To Climate Change And Malaria Vulnerability Assessments, Esther Achieng Onyango, Oz Sahin, Cordia Chu, Brendan Mackey

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Malaria is one of the key research concerns in climate change-health relationships. Numerous risk assessments and modelling studies providing evidence that the transmission range of malaria will expand with rising temperatures resulting in adverse impacts on vulnerable communities. This risk is significant in East Africa whereby current research shows an expansion of malaria into the highland areas due to changes in temperature and rainfall. While there exist multiple lines of evidence for the influence of climate change on malaria and the risk posed to vulnerable communities, there is insufficient understanding of the complexity of factors influencing the spread of the …

Exploration Of The Long Term Sustainability Of The French Risk Management, Frédéric Grelot, Bruno Bonté, Zhongyang Fang

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Public flood risk management (FRM) in France, as in other countries like USA, Great Britain, relies on a combination of tools dealing with the negative consequences of flood. Spatial scale of those tools differs: insurance is defined and managed at national scale, land use regulation is defined at national scale but implemented at local scale, protection against flood may be implemented at local or even individual scales. The objective of this communication is to build a model for the analysis of the sustainability of the French FRM. For this, we used a simple but contextualized agent-based model (Cat-Nat ABM).

In …

Scientific Research Documentation - An Information Server For The National Park Hunsrück-Hochwald, Peter Fischer-Stabel, Micheal Mattern

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Within the world network of nature reserves, a national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Beside it´s high value for nature and biodiversity, national parks are serving as sites for research, environmental monitoring, education and training. In order to ensure a long-lasting, central and efficient access to the literature and data on such a nature reserve for all scientists from the respective institutions, a research information portal was established for the National Park Hunsrück-Hochwald. Based on a user requirements analysis, a client-server architecture using open source components was set up. Core modules are a metadata-management component and …

Evaluation Of Future Climate Change Impact On Aquatic Ecosystem And Health Using Lm3-Tan Model In South Korea, Jin Wan Lee, Chung Gil Jung, So Ra Ahn, Seong Joon Kim

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Climate change could be one of the main threats faced by aquatic ecosystems and freshwater biodiversity. Recently, LM3-TAN (Land Model 3 Terrestrial and Aquatic Nitrogen) land-based physical, biological, chemical processes model for South Korea was developed to assess the combined effects of direct human influences and future climate change on Aquatic Nitrogen cycling by Korea NIEL (National Institute of Environmental Research). The objective of this study is to analyse the relationship between stream water quality, water temperature, and Trophic Diatom Index (TDI) and Benthic Macroinvertebrate Index (BMI) determined by stream water quality factors. The TDI and BMI monitored 2 times …

Supporting Wildlife Conservation By Modelling The Effectiveness Of Community-Led Poacher Mitigation, Marit E. Kragt, Eric J. Hay, Micheal Renton

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Illegal hunting and poaching are severely threatening biodiversity in Southeast Asia, especially those species that are rare or threatened. Management strategies to address this poaching problem include wildlife patrols that collect and remove wire snares. While studies exist that predict the impact of poaching on biodiversity loss, there are few studies that evaluate the effectiveness of policy strategies. We present a model that predicts how community-led poaching mitigation patrols could help wildlife conservation the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR). The results show that, without intervention, nearly all species will be poached to local extinction over the next 10 years. We …

A Java Binary Tree Data Structure For Environmental Modelling, Francesco Serafin, Marialaura Bancheri, Riccardo Rigon, Olaf David

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The modelling of natural phenomena to solve a wide range of problems has increased in popularity in the last three decades. However, as the size and complexity of the source code of environmental models has grown, issues related to maintainability and further development have arisen. In this work, we show an innovative way to simplify the reuse and development of new models, decoupling the physics of the processes from the schematization of information flow and feedback. Each physical process (for instance, evapotranspiration or runoff production) might be implemented as a stand alone component for a framework like OMS v3, which …

A Novel Approach To Parameterizing Utility Functions For Agent-Based Market Models Of Resource Choice, Dawn Parker, Yu Huang, Robert Babin, Jeff Casello, Xiongbing Jin, Xinyue Pi, Veronica Sullivan

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Theoretical economic choice models posit that agents make resource allocation decisions based on the “utility,” or subjective satisfaction that they receive from alternative choices. Utility allows agents to rank choices and potentially apply optimization algorithms to these choices. Utility, however, is not measurable in an empirical context. Thus, modelers alternatively estimate linear empirical functions that associate factors with observed choices and/or market prices. While these linear functions can include factors that reflect multiple social and natural dimensions of decision making, they are not suitable for optimization (even using assumptions of bounded rationality) or for representing synergies and substitutability between factors. …

Employing State Of The Art Model Ensembles For Impact Assessment Of Air Pollution, Leif Vogel, Sérgio Faria, Joseph V. Spadaro, Anil Markandya

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Current annual global estimates of premature deaths from poor air quality are estimated in the range of 2.6-4.4 million, and 2050 projections are expected to double against 2010 levels. In Europe, annual economic burdens are estimated at around 750 bn €. Climate change will further exacerbate air pollution burdens; therefore, a better understanding of the economic impacts on human societies has become an area of intense investigation. European research efforts on the integration of Earth Observation data within modelling frameworks have been carried out within the Monitoring Atmospheric Composition & Climate (MACC) project series, running from 2005 till 2015. The …

Pynsim: An Open-Source Software Framework For Building Simulation Models Of Multi-Actor Resource Networks, Stephen Knox, Philipp Meier, Jim Yoon, Phil Selby, Christian Klassert, Julien Harou, Thibaut Lachaut, Nicolas Avisse, Amaury Tilmant, Steve Gorelick

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Simulation of engineered resource systems is increasingly expected to represent the actions of multiple actors, from individual agents who manage one site to institutions that manage complex interactions within the resource system. These models often incorporate multiple components, which need to be integrated into a single computing context. In order to achieve such integration, a common semantic connection must be defined. We focus on systems such as water resources where a network of nodes and links can be used to represent the system. We present Pynsim, an open-source python simulation framework. In a Pynsim simulation, multiple model developers can contribute …

Simulating Regional-Scale Soil Nitrous Oxide Emissions In Scotland, Vasileios Myrgiotis, Cairistiona F. E. Topp, Robert M. Rees, Mathew Williams

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a major greenhouse gas whose largest anthropogenic source is the addition of nitrogenous fertilisers to cultivated soils. The development and application of mechanistic models of soil biogeochemistry contributes significantly to the effort to understand and quantify those N2O fluxes. Soil biogeochemistry models are complex and can be particularly difficult to evaluate because N2O measurements are usually sporadic and contain large uncertainties. Therefore, large-scale simulations with such models can be demanding. The majority of model-based studies focus on small spatial scales (i.e. field, catchment) despite the fact that simulations at larger scales are those that offer more …

Re-Examining The Abm Empirical Toolkit In A World Of Big (Behavioral) Data, Andrew Bell

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Robinson et al. (2007) identify five key modes of informing agent-based models (ABM): surveys, participant observation, field and lab experiments, companion modeling, and remotely-sensed data. Janssen and Ostrom (2006) hone in on some of the key dimensions that differentiate these approaches and the kinds of inferences that can be made from them, including the depth of capturing cognitive processes, the number of repeated observations made, and the size of the sample. A decade of technological change has occurred since these reviews were prepared, with mobile technologies in particular breaking down barriers to the scale and scope with which behavioral data …

Livelihoods Of Local Communities In An Amazonian Floodplain Coping With Global Changes: From Role-Playing Games To Hybrid Simulations To Involve Local Stakeholders In Participatory Foresight Study At Territorial Level, Pierre Biommel, Marie-Paule Bonnet, Emilie Coudel, Eva Haentjens, Cleber Nunes Kraus, Gustavo Melo, Stephanie Nasuti, Christophe Le Page

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the Amazonian floodplains, the local populations living from agricultural activities and fishing, have always coped natural variations, between flood and dry seasons. However, the rhythm and the amplitude of these floods are disturbed nowadays, resulting in great uncertainty for these populations. Biophysics and social scientists have joined hands to help these populations better improve their resilience to such changes. Our initial goal aims to better understand and discuss the impacts of current practices in the long term. To address this, we first turned the perspective around the preoccupations and strategies of local populations and collectively discussed possible future scenarios. …

A Multicriteria Assessment Method To Compare Scenarios Of Water Management In Agricultural Landscapes, Sandrine Allain, Gaël Plumecocq, Delphine Leenhardt

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In the Aveyron watershed (South-Western France), where the agricultural economy mainly relies on irrigated productions (maize and fruits), engaging changes in quantitative water management is socially challenging. The watershed suffers from a structural misbalance between the water demand and the water offer, and recurring crises in the low-flow period lead to emergency restrictions of use. This situation tenses competing stakeholder positions and erodes the social-ecological system’s resilience.Characterizing and valuing options for change can support decision-making. Nonetheless, the various expert assessments that flourished as answers to political incentives for a better management of watershed did not succeed in bringing out socially-accepted …

Using Scenario Analysis To Investigate Uncertainty In Water Resource Management, Baihua Fu, Joseph Guillaume, Mike Asher, Tony Jakeman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Water resource management is a challenging task due to the complexity and uncertainty of the environmental systems and challenges of addressing multiple stakeholder perspectives. A crucial issue is therefore in specifically understanding if and how we can make decisions under such deep uncertainty.

We examined this issue in a case study which estimates groundwater sustainability, farm profit and ecological outcomes of many drivers (e.g. climate change, water policy, farm practices). An integrated model was developed for this purpose. It encompasses a surface and groundwater model, water allocation rules, a farm decision and crop model and an ecology model. Scenarios were …

Coupling Biophysical And Socioeconomic Models: Assessing The Consequences Of Conservation Policies On Smallholder Livelihoods In The Atlantic Rainforest (Brazil), L. C. Munari, C. Troost, C. Marohn, C. Adams, A. Ribeiro-Filho, G. Cadisch, T. Berger

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Shifting cultivation is among the most typical agricultural practices of smallholders in the forest-agriculture frontiers around the tropics. Shifting cultivation depends on long fallow periods to recover vegetation, soil structure and fertility. However, different socioeconomic, geographic and political drivers are transforming the system in many places, inducing land use/land cover changes. In the Ribeira River Valley (southeastern Brazil), nature conservation policies have additionally constrained shifting cultivation, claiming it is a major driver of deforestation on one of the most important Atlantic Rainforest remnants. Smallholders practicing shifting cultivation there have intensified commercial relations, have become increasingly dependent on the market for …

Αir Quality In Urban Areas: Urban Air Pollutants, Combined Exposure Management And Planning, Christos Vlachokostas, Nicolas Moussiopoulos

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The “urban climate” is characterized by numerous environmental pressures such as air and noise pollution, toxic substances or radiation which give justifiable rise to citizens’ worries about possible impacts on public health. The effort to close the loop between health stressors in urban areas is scientifically of major importance and should be brought forward. This paper supports this initiative and presents an integrated exposure assessment for Thessaloniki, Greece. The approach is based on the application of the Combined Environmental Stressors’ Exposure (CENSE) tool. The area under consideration is a densely populated urban environment and presents high levels of environmental health …

Challenges For Involving Water Stakeholders In Educational And Decision-Making Participatory Processes Supported By Abm, Pável Bautista Solís, Camille Belmin, Grégoire Leclerc, Martine Antona, Ricardo Morataya, Pierre Bommel

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We implemented a participatory process with water stakeholders for improving resilience to drought at watershed scale, and for reducing water pollution disputes in drought prone areas. The purpose is to facilitate participatory decision making in a rural watershed impacted by recurrent droughts related to ENSO in Northwestern Costa Rica. The process involved co-designing “ContaMiCuenca”, a hybrid agent-based model, as a mediation object. We followed a Companion Modeling approach and organized 6 workshops that included research techniques such as participatory diagnostics, ARDI diagrams (actor-resources-interaction), agent-based model design and interactive simulation sessions. We collectively assessed the main water issues in …

Agent-Based Modeling Automated: Data-Driven Generation Of Innovation Diffusion Models, Thorben Jensen, Émile J.L. Chappin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Simulation modeling is useful to gain insights into driving mechanisms of diffusion of innovations. This study aims to introduce automation to make identification of such mechanisms with agent-based simulation modeling less costly in time and labor. We present a novel automation procedure in which the generation of diffusion models is automated. It comprises three phases: (1) preprocessing of empirical data on the diffusion of a specific innovation, taken out be the user; (2) automated inverse modeling of decision models from a decision model library for their capability of explaining these data; (3) policy simulation automatically assesses user-chosen policy interventions in …

An Integrated Modelling Approach For Analyzing The Land-Use Effects Of German Bioenergy Policies, Rüdiger Schaldach, Daniela Thrän, Verena Wolf, Jan Schüngel, Markus Millinger, Klaus Hennenberg, Martin Banse

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The use of energy carriers derived from biomass is an essential element of the German strategy for transforming its energy system towards renewable energy sources. In order to assess the sustainability of the related biomass production it is important to analyze the environmental impacts of land-use change both domestically and in biomass exporting regions. For this purpose the MILESTONE modelling framework has been developed. It integrates a national bioenergy model (BENSIM) with a global economic model (MAGNET) and a global land-use model (LandSHIFT). The presentation concentrates on the linkage between MAGNET and LandSHIFT which represent the global land-use system within …

Explicit Cost Accounting For Adaptation, Mitigation And Ecosystem Service Provision In Agriculture, Franz Sinabell, Karin Heinschink, Christoph Tribl

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Farmers, policy makers and scientists are well aware of this problem: obtaining sound cost information for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in agriculture or ecosystem service provision by agriculture is burdensome. In most cases, data sets are developed for a specific region with a given set of management variants for a baseline period. Adapting such information to another region or adjusting costs to expected future price scenarios requires additional efforts and frequently done an ad-hoc and case by case. A new tool is presented that can be used to identify and analyze the entangled effects of future climate and …

Futures Of Resilience And Mitigation: Combining Stakeholder Knowledge, Statistical Analysis And Integrated Modelling To Better Understand And Reduce Disaster Risk, Graeme A. Riddell, Hedwig Van Delden, Holger R. Maier, Aaron C. Zecchin, Graeme C. Dandy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Characterising disaster risk involves a complex interaction of physical and social sciences, which makes planning for its reduction significantly challenging. The impact of disasters however make the need to deal with these complexities and uncertainties significant. A common approach to dealing with problems with great uncertainty and complexity is participatory development and application of exploratory scenarios which involve both qualitative and quantitative information. Scenarios developed for the Greater Adelaide region of South Australia, Australia, involved a diverse group of stakeholders involved in natural hazards planning and response. The development and use of exploratory scenarios to assist in decision making was …

Integrated Assessment Of Novel Two-Season Production Systems In Mato Grosso, Brazil, Marcelo Moraes, Affonso Libera, Evgeny Latynskiy, Anna Hampf, José Maria Silveira, Thomas Berger

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

One of the most significant advantages of growing crops in Mato Grosso (in mid-western Brazil) is that farmers can grow two crops (in some specific cases even three) in the same season. From an economic point of view, on the one hand, this provides a strong comparative advantage. On the other hand, this increases the number of decision variables that a decision making agent has to take into account. The agricultural production planning is complex and dynamic and it needs to consider crop rotation/succession in accordance with annual variability of climatic conditions. We developed a region-specific bio-economic micro-simulation model in …

A Workflow To Model Microbial Loadings In Watersheds, Kurt Wolfe, Rajbir Parmar, Gene Whelan, Gerard F. Laniak, Mike Galvin, Keewook Kim, Marirosa Molina, Richard Zepp, Paul Duda, Dennis D. Keiser

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Many watershed models simulate overland and instream microbial fate and transport, but few actually provide loading rates on land surfaces and point sources to the water body network. This paper describes the underlying general equations for microbial loading rates associated with 1) land- applied manure on undeveloped areas from domestic animals; 2) direct shedding on undeveloped lands by domestic animals and wildlife; 3) urban or engineered areas; and 4) point sources that directly discharge to streams from septic systems and shedding by domestic animals. A microbial source module, which houses these formulations, is linked within a workflow containing eight models …