Thanks to all for the very fruitful workshop!

End of this week, we will be holding a workshop here at Milano’s Politecnico, with the aim to define a clear framework distinguishing concepts, aims and methods for modeling human behaviour in IAMs. This small workshop of 15 people will be structured in 6 sessions, each kicked off by short presentations by moderators, from Thursday morning till Friday at lunch time.

Download the agenda [pdf]

Main objectives of the workshop

Capturing behavioral features in numerical models is an acknowleged challenge. Within IAMs, with their broad scope and cross sector perspective, possibly even more challenging. Behavior, and behavioral change however plays an important role in climate change mitigation. Several attempts have been made to bridge this gap but a general view on how to tackle this topic in a consistent manner is currently lacking.

Questions arise such as what do we define as behavior, how do we quantify it, but also what purpose does capturing these effect in models serve and are these long term models actually appropriate tools. Building on the modelling efforts done so far, in this workshop we aim to distinguish what we can learn from the past and what as a community we can distinguish as important steps forward. Some illustrative examples which address the topics discussed below are presented by the moderators to kick start the discussion but the aim is to develop and define a clear framework distinguishing concepts, aims and methods. The findings of the workshop will be summarized in a perspective article.