Initiative
The Ecological Sequestration Trust (TEST)

resilience.io Economics Webinar Oct 2014

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

resilience.io Economics Webinar Oct 2014

The Ecological Sequestration Trust Published on Nov 9, 2014

a webinar by Stephen Passmore (The Ecological Sequestration Trust) and Rembrandt Koppelaar (IIER/ICL) that will explain the http://resilience.io platform focusing on its core capability in providing cross-sector decision support for a city and its hinterland.

We will provide an overview of how the resource-economic simulation model operates and provides the evidence in city region decision-making for investment, procurement, policy making, and planning, to achieve more resilient solutions. We will focus on the interconnections between resource flows from human and ecological agents as well as the socio-economic activity of people and companies, and how these deliver regional outputs.

Areas that we will be addressing include:

Resource flows and socio-economic model interconnections.

Links to planning, procurement, policy making, and investment decisions.

Data acquisition, maintenance, and sharing cross-sector and regional interdependencies.

1. resilience.io Webinar 28th October 2014 @resilienceIO

2. Agenda 1.Introduction – 5 mins Stephen Passmore Head of Platform Development - TEST 2.Model Processes and Functions – 30 mins Rembrandt Koppelaar Modelling research lead - IIER 3.Questions – 25 mins Enquiries: Alexander.Schmidt@ecosequestrust.org

3. Some Fundamentals • We are facing the combined challenges of climate change, population increase and urbanisation, increasing resource scarcity and its impact on our economies, society and environment. • This is a systemic challenge – we need to meet it with systems thinking and a coordinated response that stimulates closer collaboration between the public, private, knowledge and community sectors. • City-regions are on the front line and where systemic change has the potential to deliver the most rapid benefits.

4. The Ecological Sequestration Trust • TEST is a UK Charity formed in 2011 to speed up and scale up transformative urban/rural development towards a resilient, low carbon, resource efficient way of living. • We operate in the space between private, pubic, knowledge and community sectors to facilitate systems integration and to support collaborative decision making on policies and investment. • TEST has brought together world-leading modellers and sector experts to design and create the world’s first open-source, fully integrated resource and economics systems model for city-regions.

5. Resilience.io Platform Technical Brief on Model Architecture & Decision Support 28 October 2014 Rembrandt Koppelaar – Modelling Research Lead Institute for Integrated Economic Research (IIER)

6. A new approach to sustainability and resilience Now Where we could be with systems thinking and an urban-rural approach • Sequential approach in project evaluation • Conventional economic assessment dominates • Short term political and finance cycle perspective • Environment plane silo-ed (i.e. water-food-energy, urban and rural viewed separately) • Social benefit at the end of the line (not transparent) • INTEGRATED DESIGN • INTEGRATED PLANNING • ACCELERATED DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENT PLANNING DESIGN DESIGN PLANNING DEVELOPMENT

7. Approach to Sustainable Regions • A Regional Approach Is Fundamental • Gather regional data, develop regional knowledge, embed integrated regional planning, build regional capacity and shared confidence to act • Must unite economic, societal and environmental perspectives and shape interventions with a common/credible economic analyses

8. Overview • Linking Resource Flows & Socio-Economics • Simulation Modelling for Decision Insights • Building a Regional Demonstrator Model • Cross-Sector Collaboration

9. Components Overview Model core is a link between: • Resource conversions (material & energy balance + labour). • Agent based socio-economics (human activities & decisions). Both components are calibrated for each location and run with a set of selected “rules” for institutions and policies

10. Biophysical resource conversions • All activities across sectors can be described as resource conversions with labour inputs in space and time. • Systematic Resource Conversion Process Library across all sectors (14). • Hard-coded boundary description for allocation to spatial landscapes. • Modular setup to enable creation of local configurations. Source of top figure: Brandt et al. (2013) Calculating systems-scale energy efficiency and net energy returns : A bottom-up matrix-based approach. Energy 62. p.235-247 Source of bottom figure:: Kuosmanen, N., Kuosmanen,T., (2013). Modeling Cumulative Effects of Nutrient Surpluses in Agriculture: A Dynamic Approach to Material Balance Accounting. Ecological Economics. 90. p. 159-167. Category Nonprofits & Activism License Standard YouTube License