Reducing packaging waste is a critical challenge that requires organizations to collaborate within circular ecosystems, considering social, economic, and technical variables like decision-making behavior, material prices, and available technologies. Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) offers a valuable methodology for understanding these complex dynamics. In our research, we have developed an ABM to explore circular ecosystems’ potential in reducing packaging waste, using a case study of the Dutch food packaging ecosystem. The model incorporates three types of agents—beverage producers, packaging producers, and waste treaters—who can form closed-loop recycling systems.

Beverage Producer Agents: These agents represent the beverage company divided into five types based on packaging formats: cans, PET bottles, glass bottles, cartons, and bag-in-boxes. Each producer has specific packaging demands based on product volume, type, weight, and reuse potential. They select packaging suppliers annually, guided by deterministic decision styles: bargaining (seeking the lowest price) or problem-solving (prioritizing high recycled content).

Packaging Producer Agents: These agents are responsible for creating packaging using either recycled or virgin materials. The model assumes a mix of monopolistic and competitive market situations, with agents calculating annual material needs. Decision styles influence their choices: bargaining agents compare recycled and virgin material costs, while problem-solving agents prioritize maximum recycled content. They calculate recycled content in packaging and set prices accordingly, ensuring all produced packaging is sold within or outside the model.

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The model’s aim is to represent the price dynamics under very simple market conditions, given the values adopted by the user for the model parameters. We suppose the market of a financial asset contains agents on the hypothesis they have zero-intelligence. In each period, a certain amount of agents are randomly selected to participate to the market. Each of these agents decides, in a equiprobable way, between proposing to make a transaction (talk = 1) or not (talk = 0). Again in an equiprobable way, each participating agent decides to speak on the supply (ask) or the demand side (bid) of the market, and proposes a volume of assets, where this number is drawn randomly from a uniform distribution. The granularity depends on various factors, including market conventions, the type of assets or goods being traded, and regulatory requirements. In some markets, high granularity is essential to capture small price movements accurately, while in others, coarser granularity is sufficient due to the nature of the assets or goods being traded

ViSA 2.0.0 is an updated version of ViSA 1.0.0 aiming at integrating empirical data of a new use case that is much smaller than in the first version to include field scale analysis. Further, the code of the model is simplified to make the model easier and faster. Some features from the previous version have been removed.
It simulates decision behaviors of different stakeholders showing demands for ecosystem services (ESS) in agricultural landscape. It investigates conditions and scenarios that can increase the supply of ecosystem services while keeping the viability of the social system by suggesting different mixes of initial unit utilities and decision rules.

ViSA simulates the decision behaviors of different stakeholders showing demands for ecosystem services (ESS) in agricultural landscape. The lack of sufficient supply of ESSs triggers stakeholders to apply different management options to increase their supply. However, while attempting to reduce the supply-demand gap, conflicts arise among stakeholders due to the tradeoff nature of some ESS. ViSA investigates conditions and scenarios that can minimize such supply-demand gap while reducing the risk of conflicts by suggesting different mixes of management options and decision rules.

This is a simulation of an insurance market where the premium moves according to the balance between supply and demand. In this model, insurers set their supply with the aim of maximising their expected utility gain while operating under imperfect information about both customer demand and underlying risk distributions.

There are seven types of insurer strategies. One type follows a rational strategy within the bounds of imperfect information. The other six types also seek to maximise their utility gain, but base their market expectations on a chartist strategy. Under this strategy, market premium is extrapolated from trends based on past insurance prices. This is subdivided according to whether the insurer is trend following or a contrarian (counter-trend), and further depending on whether the trend is estimated from short-term, medium-term, or long-term data.

Customers are modelled as a whole and allocated between insurers according to available supply. Customer demand is calculated according to a logit choice model based on the expected utility gain of purchasing insurance for an average customer versus the expected utility gain of non-purchase.

UPDATE in V1.1.0: missing input data files added; relative paths to input data files changed to “../data/FILENAME”

A model that allows for representing key theories of Roman amphora reuse, to explore the differences in the distribution of amphorae, re-used amphorae and their contents.

This model generates simulated distributions of prime-use amphorae, primeuse contents (e.g. olive oil) and reused amphorae. These simulated distributions will differ between experiments depending on the experiment’s variable settings representing the tested theory: variations in the probability of reuse, the supply volume, the probability of reuse at ports. What we are interested in teasing out is what the effect is of each theory on the simulated amphora distributions.

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Agriculture is the largest water-consuming sector worldwide, responsible for almost 70% of the world’s total freshwater consumption. Agricultural water reuse is one of the most sustainable and reliable methods to alleviate water shortages worldwide. However, the dynamics of agricultural water reuse adoption by farmers and its impacts on local water resources are still unknown to the scientific community, according to the literature. Therefore, the primary purpose of the WRAF model is to investigate the micro-level dynamics of agricultural water reuse adoption by farmers and its impacts on local water resources. The WRAF was developed using agent-based modeling as an exploratory tool for scenario analysis. The model was specifically designed for researchers and water resources decision-makers, especially those interested in natural resources management and water reuse.
WRAF simulates a virtual agricultural area in which several autonomous farms operate. It also simulates these farms’ water consumption dynamics. The developed model includes two types of agents: farmers and wastewater treatment plants. In general, farmer agents are the main water-consuming agents, and wastewater treatment plant agents are recycled water providers in the WRAF model. Dynamic simulation of agricultural water supply and demand in the area allows the user to observe the results of various irrigation water management scenarios, including recycled water. The models also enable the user to apply multiple climate change scenarios, including normal, moderate drought, severe drought, and wet weather conditions.

This model is an agent-based simulation written in Python 2.7, which simulates the cost of social care in an ageing UK population. The simulation incorporates processes of population change which affect the demand for and supply of social care, including health status, partnership formation, fertility and mortality. Fertility and mortality rates are drawn from UK population data, then projected forward to 2050 using the methods developed by Lee and Carter 1992.

The model demonstrates that rising life expectancy combined with lower birthrates leads to growing social care costs across the population. More surprisingly, the model shows that the oft-proposed intervention of raising the retirement age has limited utility; some reductions in costs are attained initially, but these reductions taper off beyond age 70. Subsequent work has enhanced and extended this model by adding more detail to agent behaviours and familial relationships.

The version of the model provided here produces outputs in a format compatible with the GEM-SA uncertainty quantification software by Kennedy and O’Hagan. This allows sensitivity analyses to be performed using Gaussian Process Emulation.

The purpose of this model is to understand the role of trade networks and their interaction with different fish resources, for fish provision. The model is developed based on a multi-methods approach, combining agent-based modeling, network analysis and qualitative data based on a small-scale fisheries study case. The model can be used to investigate both how trade network structures are embedded in a social-ecological context and the trade processes that occur within them, to analyze how they lead to emergent outcomes related to the resilience of fish provision. The model processes are informed by qualitative data analysis, and the social network analysis of an empirical fish trade network. The network analysis can be used to investigate diverse network structures to perform model experiments, and their influence on model outcomes.

The main outcomes we study are 1) the overexploitation of fish resources and 2) the availability and variability of fish provision to satisfy different market demands, and 3) individual traders’ fish supply at the micro-level. The model has two types of trader agents, seller and dealer. The model reveals that the characteristics of the trade networks, linked to different trader types (that have different roles in those networks), can affect the resilience of fish provision.

The purpose of the model is to explore the influence of the design of circular business models (CBMs) on CBM viability. The model represents an Industrial Symbiosis Network (ISN) in which a processor uses the organic waste from suppliers to produce biogas and nutrient rich digestate for local reuse. CBM viability is expressed as value captured (e.g., cash flow/tonne waste/agent) and the survival of the network over time (shown in the interface).

In the model, the value captured is calculated relative to the initial state, using incineration costs as a benchmark. Moderating variables are interactions with the waste incinerator and actor behaviour factors. Actors may leave the network when the waste supply for local production is too low, or when personal economic benefits are too low. When the processor decides to leave, the network fails. Theory of planned behaviour can be used to include agent behaviour in the simulations.