On the Potential to Manage a Transition to Sustainability in the Westland

The Westland-Oostland Greenport is a large Dutch industrial cluster that is economically, socially and culturally important. Like many industries and regions, the greenport is facing serious challenges as a result of globalisation, energy supplies, and greenhouse gas emissions. These challenges can be understood as sustainability issues that...

Fostering Climate Resilient Electricity Infrastructures

Heat waves, hurricanes, floods and windstorms - recent years have seen dramatic failures in electricity infrastructures sparked by short-term departures of environmental conditions from their norms. Driven by a changing climate, such deviations are anticipated to increase in severity and/or frequency over the coming decades. This will have...

Eco-transformation of industrial parks in China

During the past three decades, China has achieved impressive economic development. However, the pollution and resource depletion that accompanied China's rapid industrialization have led to severe environmental issues, such as ecosystem degradation, groundwater contamination and smog, which have turned into visible crises. In China, industrial...

Structuring Socio-technical Complexity: Modelling Agent Systems using Institutional Analysis

Socio-technical systems consist of many heterogeneous decision making entities and technological artefacts. These systems are governed through public policy that unravels in a multi-scale institutional context, which ranges from norms and values to technical standards. Simulation, agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) in particular, is an...

Understanding socio-technical change: A system-network-agent approach

Transitions are processes of change that have always occurred in society: for example, the production of goods changed from handcraft to machine-made. In recent years, these transitions attract more and more attention, mainly because societies now wish to actively bring about certain changes, such as the reduction of the use of fossil fuels –...

Co-Evolutionary Method For Modelling Large Scale Socio-Technical Systems Evolution

Exactly predicting the future of an evolving large scale socio-technical system is impossible. Yet, if we are to sustainably manage the industrial and infrastructure systems our society depends on, we must understand how the actions we take today will affect the evolution of these systems. Simulating how the social and technical networks co...