Bioeconomic Modeling

“Bioeconomic modeling” refers to computer simulation approaches that capture biophysical and economic processes plus their interactions. Conventional approaches, in contrast, build either on biology/physics (“Ecological Modeling”) or on economics (“Economic Modeling”), which severely narrows the range of valid simulation scenarios and feedbacks that can be analyzed.

While initial bioeconomic modeling attempts were confined to case studies with small spatial extents, recent advances in high-performance computing (“massive parallelization”) and programming technology (“agent-based simulation”) now permit large-scale fine-resolution analysis at landscape up to national level. This scope and detail are required to assess the economic and governance implications when introducing new digital technologies and agri-environmental policy programs. Members of this research network have been at the forefront of bioeconomic research for many years, particularly in Hohenheim’s Research Unit DFG-FOR 1695 (“Regional Climate Change”).

The software package MPMAS, developed in DFG-FOR 1695, is one of the most advanced agent-based land-use models with applications in 11 countries so far, documented in 38 peer-reviewed publications with more than 1,000 citations. The soil-plant system software package Expert-N (XN), originally developed at Helmholtz-Zentrum München and then extended in DFG-FOR 1695, is part of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) and has demonstrated its predictive skills at various geographical locations around the globe. The bioeconomic modeling system MPMAS_XN is complemented by the seamless forecast system WRF-NOAHMP, operated in more than 40 countries, which has been refined in DFG-FOR 1695 for realizing advanced weather forecasts, seasonal simulations, and climate projections.