Stimulating Corporate Climate Action: A Case Study of the Steel Industry Using Agent-Based Modelling

Corporations’ economic activities put significant stress on the environment. In order to limit global warming to 1.5°C, companies need to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. However, shifting the responsibility of decarbonisation from being solely on governments to being shared with these companies is only a recent phenomenon....

A warm welcome or a poor pick? Exploring energy poverty and inequality in the transition to a heat network in Delft

Energy poverty is an increasingly important issue. While vulnerable households are especially at risk in the energy transition, energy poverty effects of the transition are unknown. In Delft, a district heating network based on geothermal energy is planned. The distributive justice aspects of heat networks in the heating transition remain...

Applying agent-based modelling as a risk analysis tool for enforcement: a case study of the regulation of the Dutch plant protection products chain

The problem-solving approach to public regulation places new demands on regulatory agencies in terms of risk analysis: every regulatory problem that is to be solved demands a new, unique analysis to find effective intervention strategies. Many risk analysis tools are available to regulators, however, to date agent-based modelling has not been...

An improved Tabu Search for optimising the configuration of an agent-based simulation model of a novel security checkpoint

The major international airport, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, is redesigning its security checkpoints for 2024, for which a novel type of security checkpoint configuration is considered. In this redesign, one seeks to find the optimal checkpoint configuration; however, this remains non-trivial. The checkpoint configuration problem requires a...

Extended Producer Responsibility to Reduce Plastic Waste Pollution: An agent-based analysis for Indonesia

Research background<br/>Plastic debris in the environment consists primarily of plastic consumer waste. One of its leading causes is the lack of waste collection systems in developing countries. Actions need to be taken to overcome this issue, and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) seems to be an effective solution for encountering plastic...

Follow the herd?: Studying herding behaviour in mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands

The absence of medicines to cure COVID-19 calls for preventive strategies, including mask-wearing. Despite its protection against exposure to coronavirus, not everyone chooses to wear a mask. Some studies addressed mask-wearing behaviour from the standpoint of behavioural economics, one being the effect of herding behaviour. This occurs when...

An agent-based modelling study and analysis of an adaptive multi-UAV virus test delivery system

In February and March 2020, the COVID-19 disease spread rapidly across the world. It was a new disease for which many countries were not prepared. In the Netherlands there was a scarcity of virus tests, and lack of coordination on the allocation of these scarce tests. Besides, there was no proactive acquisition of<br/>spread information, and...

Agent-Based Modelling and Analysis of Non-Autonomous Airport Ground Surface Operations

The highly fuel-inefficient aircraft taxi-phase causes the industry to consider alternative ground propulsion systems. External systems like the Taxibot are preferred over onboard systems as they do not require aircraft structural additions and recertifications. However, the operational implementation of external taxi-systems is expected to...

Nudging residential EV charging behaviour: An analysis of existing agent-based model formalisations: Flatten the curve

By analysing existing agent-based model (ABM) charging behaviour formalisations, this study evaluates the impact of a new static band-width network tariff structure on charging demand. Additionally, this approach enables a comparative study to reflect upon the susceptibility and value of the ABM method. Based on the simulation results, this...

Exploring self-organisation for car-sharing systems: An agent-based approach

Cities are getting more congested and polluted as they grow; transportation is one of the contributors to this. Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) could revolutionise the transportation sector for people. In MaaS, the car-sharing schemes will play a vital role and can help in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, in the long-term, these...

Safety Risk Assessment in Aircraft Fuel Planning and Management

In this report we demonstrate the outcomes of the research performed in the Air Transport Safety Institute of the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR). This research project constitutes the MSc Thesis of the writer, towards the graduation of the MSc Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology (Air Transport &amp; Operations). The...

Corporate governance, taxes and real investment in non-financial firms: An agent-based approach

Real investment within non-financial corporations has been steadily decreasing in the last fifty years, as increased payout to shareholders is seen as one of the main causes . Chetty &amp; Saez (2006) argue that taxes on profits, dividend payout and capital gain also have a negative impact on payout, and thus real investment in non-financial...

Agent-based modelling in energy scenario development: An analysis of contemporary energy scenarios for the Netherlands

In order to determine how the energy sector of the Netherlands can or should look in the future, energy scenarios are used to explore possible alternative futures. Many scenarios for the Netherlands exist, but a classification of contemporary Dutch electricity scenarios is missing. Additionally, agent-based modelling (ABM) has often been...

Belief dynamics driven by social influence: A social practice-based model of belief adaption driven by intragroup interaction with application to transport mode choices

Agent-based modelling (ABM) is a widespread and commonly used technique for the understanding of social system behaviour. Despite ABM being a commonly used method for the analysis of complex social systems, simulated agents still can best be described as autistic before a specific set of social rules is ascribed to them. This discrepancy leads...

Trade-off Analysis between Security and Efficiency of Airport Operations: A methodological underpinned modelling approach to identify, analyse and evaluate trade-offs based on empirical choice observations

This Master Thesis document presents a research on trade-off analysis between security and efficiency factors during airport operations. Over the past few decades there has been an increase in security in the air transportation industry, with even more measures taken since 9/11. Besides affecting the operational costs of airports, the stricter...

Institutional dimension of flood risk: Understanding institutional complexity in Flood Risk Management for the case of St Maarten

As extreme weather events increase both in frequency and magnitude (IPCC, 2012, 2014), and considering that over 60% of the world population lives in coastal areas (UNEP, 2016) flood risk is increasing. Hereby, the need to address Flood Risk Management (FRM) becomes evident. Especially on small island the need for adequate FRM is apparent: ...

Assessing the impact of power plant location decisions on the long term development of the electricity sector

This research presents a new way to assess the impact of location decisions for new power plants by power producers. It builds on an existing agent-based model that is able to simulate market and investment behavior of power produc- ers in a north western European electricity market (EMlab-generation). This study adds a module that is based on...