Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (2) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (2)
Language
- English (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2)
Keywords
- Agent-based models (1)
- Model development (1)
- Multidimensionality (1)
- Review (1)
- Social-ecological systems (1)
- Stability properties (1)
Institute
- Institut für Geowissenschaften (2) (remove)
Anthropogenic pressures increasingly alter natural systems. Therefore, understanding the resilience of agent-based complex systems such as ecosystems, i.e. their ability to absorb these pressures and sustain their functioning and services, is a major challenge. However, the mechanisms underlying resilience are still poorly understood. A main reason for this is the multidimensionality of both resilience, embracing the three fundamental stability properties recovery, resistance and persistence, and of the specific situations for which stability properties can be assessed. Agent-based models (ABM) complement empirical research which is, for logistic reasons, limited in coping with these multiple dimensions. Besides their ability to integrate multidimensionality through extensive manipulation in a fully controlled system, ABMs can capture the emergence of system resilience from individual interactions and feedbacks across different levels of organization. To assess the extent to which this potential of ABMs has already been exploited, we reviewed the state of the art in exploring resilience and its multidimensionality in ecological and socio-ecological systems with ABMs. We found that the potential of ABMs is not utilized in most models, as they typically focus on a single dimension of resilience by using variability as a proxy for persistence, and are limited to one reference state, disturbance type and scale. Moreover, only few studies explicitly test the ability of different mechanisms to support resilience. To overcome these limitations, we recommend to simultaneously assess multiple stability properties for different situations and under consideration of the mechanisms that are hypothesised to render a system resilient. This will help us to better exploit the potential of ABMs to understand and quantify resilience mechanisms, and hence support solving real-world problems related to the resilience of agent-based complex systems.
With the advancement of computational systems and the development of model integration concepts, complexity of environmental model systems increased. In contrast to that, theory and knowledge about>environmental systems as well as the capability for environmental systems analyses remained, to a large extent, unchanged. As a consequence, model conceptualization, data gathering, and validation, have faced new challenges that hardly can be tackled by modellers alone. In this discourse-like review, we argue that modelling with reliable simulations of human-environmental interactions necessitate linking modelling and simulation research much stronger to science fields such as landscape ecology, community ecology, eco-hydrology, etc. It thus becomes more and more important to identify the adequate degree of complexity in environmental models (which is not only a technical or methodological question), to ensure data availability, and to test model performance. Even equally important, providing problem specific answers to environmental problems using simulation tools requires addressing end-user and stakeholder requirements during early stages of problem development. In doing so, we avoid modelling and simulation as an end of its own.