Research projects
Economics of Climate Change Mitigation
US NSF SLUCE II (2009-2014) - project ‘Spatial Land-Use Change and Ecological Effects (SLUCE): Interactions of Exurban Land Management and Carbon Dynamics'
Exurban residential development is widespread, constituting one of the major forms of land-use and land-cover changes in the Eastern US and elsewhere. This sprawl has large impacts on natural and rural landscapes, ecosystem services, and quality of life for millions of people. This project investigates the processes linking dynamics of land-atmosphere carbon budgets in exurban residential areas, preferences for land-cover types and patterns on these lands, and land-management activities of residents and developers. The goal of the project is to obtain a clearer understanding of the relationships between carbon dynamics, land-management activities, and market and non-market values of land-uses and land-covers focusing on how carbon dynamics might respond in a non-linear fashion to various management and policy options for land-cover management. I am involved primarily in the design of an agent-based land market model to examine a range of exurban land-cover patterns that might be expected to result from market and policy drivers. The project team looks for the existence of ecologically significant thresholds (e.g., large, nonlinear land-atmosphere carbon exchange in response to small changes in policy, preferences or behaviors) that are revealed in the coupled system.
More: http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/sluce/
Collaborating institutions: University of Michigan(USA) and University of Waterloo (Canada)
Research output: see papers # 9, 11, 12 and 14
Exurban residential development is widespread, constituting one of the major forms of land-use and land-cover changes in the Eastern US and elsewhere. This sprawl has large impacts on natural and rural landscapes, ecosystem services, and quality of life for millions of people. This project investigates the processes linking dynamics of land-atmosphere carbon budgets in exurban residential areas, preferences for land-cover types and patterns on these lands, and land-management activities of residents and developers. The goal of the project is to obtain a clearer understanding of the relationships between carbon dynamics, land-management activities, and market and non-market values of land-uses and land-covers focusing on how carbon dynamics might respond in a non-linear fashion to various management and policy options for land-cover management. I am involved primarily in the design of an agent-based land market model to examine a range of exurban land-cover patterns that might be expected to result from market and policy drivers. The project team looks for the existence of ecologically significant thresholds (e.g., large, nonlinear land-atmosphere carbon exchange in response to small changes in policy, preferences or behaviors) that are revealed in the coupled system.
More: http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/sluce/
Collaborating institutions: University of Michigan(USA) and University of Waterloo (Canada)
Research output: see papers # 9, 11, 12 and 14
EU FP7 COMPLEX (2013-2016) ‘Knowledge Based Climate Mitigation Systems for a Low Carbon Economy’, UT coordinator (€1.150.000) and WP5 Co-PI (€375.000)
The COMPLEX project aims to develop a suite of modeling tools to explore potential thresholds, feedback loops, avalanche effects, and abrupt irreversible changes in climate-energy-economy system. The suit of models combines classic Integrated Assessment Model (IAM), macro economic Computational General Equilibrium Models (CGEs), System Dynamics model (SD) and Agent-Based Models (ABMs) to study non-linear dynamics of coupled socio-ecological systems in their transition to a low-carbon economy. At UT we are developing an agent-based energy market model with the purpose of studying aggregated impacts of behavioral changes in energy use on the household level (demand side) and technology diffusion among producers of low-carbon energy sources (supply side), as well as potential emergence of non-marginal changes in energy markets. We plan to combine this energy market ABM with macroeconomic CGE model to quantify the impacts of these non-linearities on other sectors of the economy and corresponding CO2 footprint. The model will serve as a virtual social science laboratory to test the impacts of various policies, also beyond traditional market-based ones.
I work on this project together with Leila Niamir and Prof. Alexey Voinov.
More: http://www.complex.ac.uk/
Collaborating institutions: TNO (NL), Basque Centre For Climate Change (Spain), NIERSC (Russia), Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (Germany), IIASA (Austria) and more than 10 other EU universities and research institutes.
Research output: see paper #13 and 20
The COMPLEX project aims to develop a suite of modeling tools to explore potential thresholds, feedback loops, avalanche effects, and abrupt irreversible changes in climate-energy-economy system. The suit of models combines classic Integrated Assessment Model (IAM), macro economic Computational General Equilibrium Models (CGEs), System Dynamics model (SD) and Agent-Based Models (ABMs) to study non-linear dynamics of coupled socio-ecological systems in their transition to a low-carbon economy. At UT we are developing an agent-based energy market model with the purpose of studying aggregated impacts of behavioral changes in energy use on the household level (demand side) and technology diffusion among producers of low-carbon energy sources (supply side), as well as potential emergence of non-marginal changes in energy markets. We plan to combine this energy market ABM with macroeconomic CGE model to quantify the impacts of these non-linearities on other sectors of the economy and corresponding CO2 footprint. The model will serve as a virtual social science laboratory to test the impacts of various policies, also beyond traditional market-based ones.
I work on this project together with Leila Niamir and Prof. Alexey Voinov.
More: http://www.complex.ac.uk/
Collaborating institutions: TNO (NL), Basque Centre For Climate Change (Spain), NIERSC (Russia), Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (Germany), IIASA (Austria) and more than 10 other EU universities and research institutes.
Research output: see paper #13 and 20