IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/gjagec/253198.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A New Graphical User Interface Generator for Economic Models and its Comparison to Existing Approaches

Author

Listed:
  • Britz, Wolfgang

Abstract

The paper discusses the role of Graphical User Inter-faces in economic modelling and specifically the de-velopment of a new Graphical User Interface Genera-tor for applications realized in GAMS (General Alge-braic Modelling System), a widely used Algebraic Modelling Language for (bio-)economic simulation models. It motivates the development of GGIG (Gams Graphical Interface Generator) by reviewing existing approaches. In opposite to frameworks available for environmental and Agent Based Modelling, GUI ge-nerators for more classical economic models seem to be scarce. GGIG aims at a fast development process not requiring programming skills where simple user operable controls are defined in an XML file such that GAMS based projects can add easily a GUI. It com-prises quite versatile exploitation tools for interactive reporting (tables, graphs and maps) including a ma-chine learning package plus useful utilities, e.g. to generate a HTML based GAMS code documentation or batch execution. In opposite to other approaches, GGIG strictly separates the GUI and GAMS code, but does not offer IDE functionality. Applications to CAPRI, a rather complex model, and some smaller projects seem to show that researchers without formal programming training are able to develop and modify a GUI for their models, while model users can be quickly trained in GGIG based GUIs.Der Aufsatz diskutiert die Bedeutung Grafischer Benutzeroberflächen in der ökonomischen Modellie-rung, insbesondere die Entwicklung eines neues Werkzeugs zur Erstellung Grafischer Oberflächen für Anwendungen basierend auf GAMS (General Algebraic Modelling System), einer weitverbreiteten Algebraischen Modellierungssprache für (bio-)öko-nomische Simulationsmodelle. Er motiviert die Ent-wicklung von GGIG (Gams Graphical Interface Ge-nerator) vor dem Hintergrund eines Überblicks alter-nativer Ansätze. Im Gegensatz zu bestehenden Pro-grammiergerüsten für umwelt- oder agentenbasierte Modellierung scheinen nur wenige Werkzeuge zur Erstellung von Benutzeroberflächen klassischer öko-nomischer Modelle verfügbar zu sein. GGIG zielt auf einen schnellen Entwicklungsprozess, der keine Kenntnisse in der Programmierung voraussetzt und auf der Definition einfacher Bedienelemente in einer XML-Datei basiert, wodurch sich ohne großen Auf-wand eine Nutzeroberfläche zu einem GAMS-Projekt erstellen lässt. GGIG enthält darüber hinaus recht vielseitige Instrumente zur Erzeugung interaktiver Ergebnisauswertungen (Tabellen, Grafiken und Kar-ten) einschließlich eines Paketes maschineller Lern-verfahren sowie zusätzlich Dienstprogramme, z.B. zur Erstellung einer HTML basierten Dokumentation des GAMS-Codes oder zur Batchausführung. Im Gegen-satz zu anderen Ansätzen trennt GGIG klar zwischen dem GAMS-Code und der Nutzeroberfläche, bietet dafür aber auch keine Funktionen einer Integrierten Entwicklungsumgebung an. Die Anwendung von GGIG in CAPRI, einem recht komplexen Modellsys-tem, und einigen kleineren Projekten legen es nahe, dass Forscher ohne formale Programmierkenntnisse mittels GGIG Benutzeroberflächen für ihre Modellen entwickeln und pflegen können, während Modellan-wender sich schnell in die Nutzung der Oberflächen einarbeiten.

Suggested Citation

  • Britz, Wolfgang, 2014. "A New Graphical User Interface Generator for Economic Models and its Comparison to Existing Approaches," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 63(04), pages 1-15, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:gjagec:253198
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.253198
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/253198/files/4_Britz.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.253198?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rizzoli, Andrea E. & Wien, J.J.F. & Knapen, Rob & Ruinelli, Lorenzo & Athanasiadis, Ioannis & Jonsson, Benny, 2009. "Updated version of final design and of the architecture of SEAMLESS-IF," Reports 57935, Wageningen University, SEAMLESS: System for Environmental and Agricultural Modelling; Linking European Science and Society.
    2. Salamon, Petra & Chantreuil, Frederic & Donnellan, Trevor & Erjavec, Emil & Esposti, Roberto & Hanrahan, Kevin F. & van Leeuwen, Myrna & Bouma, Foppe & Dol, Wietse & Salputra, Guna, 2008. "How to deal with the challenges of linking a large number of individual national models: the case of the AGMEMOD Partnership," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 57(08), pages 1-6.
    3. Bernd Lengers & Wolfgang Britz, 2012. "The choice of emission indicators in environmental policy design: an analysis of GHG abatement in different dairy farms based on a bio-economic model approach," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement, INRA Department of Economics, vol. 93(2), pages 117-144.
    4. Christine Wieck & Simon W. Schlüter & Wolfgang Britz, 2012. "Assessment of the Impact of Avian Influenza–related Regulatory Policies on Poultry Meat Trade and Welfare," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(8), pages 1037-1052, August.
    5. Scott McDonald & Sherman Robinson & Karen Thierfelder, 2007. "Globe: A SAM Based Global CGE Model using GTAP Data," Departmental Working Papers 14, United States Naval Academy Department of Economics.
    6. Claudia Heidecke & Thomas Heckelei, 2010. "Impacts of changing water inflow distributions on irrigation and farm income along the Drâa River in Morocco," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 41(2), pages 135-149, March.
    7. Petr Havlík & Hugo Valin & Aline Mosnier & Michael Obersteiner & Justin S. Baker & Mario Herrero & Mariana C. Rufino & Erwin Schmid, 2013. "Crop Productivity and the Global Livestock Sector: Implications for Land Use Change and Greenhouse Gas Emissions," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 95(2), pages 442-448.
    8. Moss, Joan E. & Binfield, Julian C.R. & Zhang, Lichun & Patton, Myles & Kim, In Seck, 2011. "A Stochastic Analysis of the Impact of Volatile World Agricultural Prices on European and UK Agriculture," 85th Annual Conference, April 18-20, 2011, Warwick University, Coventry, UK 108771, Agricultural Economics Society.
    9. DE WOLF, Daniel & SMEERS, Yves, 2000. "The gas transmission problem solved by an extension of the simplex algorithm," LIDAM Reprints CORE 1489, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    10. Verweij, P.J.F.M. & Knapen, M.J.R. & de Winter, W.P. & Wien, J.J.F. & te Roller, J.A. & Sieber, S. & Jansen, J.M.L., 2010. "An IT perspective on integrated environmental modelling: The SIAT case," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(18), pages 2167-2176.
    11. van Ittersum, Martin K. & Ewert, Frank & Heckelei, Thomas & Wery, Jacques & Alkan Olsson, Johanna & Andersen, Erling & Bezlepkina, Irina & Brouwer, Floor & Donatelli, Marcello & Flichman, Guillermo & , 2008. "Integrated assessment of agricultural systems - A component-based framework for the European Union (SEAMLESS)," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 96(1-3), pages 150-165, March.
    12. Lengers, Bernd, 2012. "The choice of emission indicators in environmental policy design: an analysis of GHG abatement in different dairy farms based on a bio-economic model approach," Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement, Editions NecPlus, vol. 93(02), pages 117-144, June.
    13. Salamon, Petra & Chantreuil, Frederic & Donnellan, Trevor & Erjavec, Emil & Esposti, Roberto & Hanrahan, Kevin F. & van Leeuwen, Myrna & Salputra, Guna, 2008. "Linking Large Numbers of Individual National Models: The Case of the AGMEMOD Partnership," 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium 43539, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    14. Britz, Wolfgang & Pérez-Dominguez, Ignacio & Narayanan, Gopalakrishnan Badri, 2015. "Analyzing Results from Agricultural Large-scale Economic Simulation Models: Recent Progress and the Way Ahead," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 64(02), June.
    15. Daniel De Wolf & Yves Smeers, 2000. "The Gas Transmission Problem Solved by an Extension of the Simplex Algorithm," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1454-1465, November.
    16. Robert M'barek & Wolfgang Britz & Alison Burrell & Jacques Delincé, 2012. "An integrated Modelling Platform for Agro-economic Commodity and Policy Analysis (iMAP) - a look back and the way forward," JRC Research Reports JRC69667, Joint Research Centre.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mössinger, Johannes & Troost, Christian & Berger, Thomas, 2022. "Bridging the gap between models and users: A lightweight mobile interface for optimized farming decisions in interactive modeling sessions," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    2. Wolfgang Britz & Hasan Dudu & Ilaria Fusacchia & Yaghoob Jafari & Roberto Roson & Luca Salvatici & Martina Sartori, 2019. "Economy-wide analysis of food waste reductions and related costs," JRC Research Reports JRC113395, Joint Research Centre.
    3. Klaus Mittenzwei & Wolfgang Britz, 2018. "Analysing Farm‐specific Payments for Norway using the Agrispace Model," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(3), pages 777-793, September.
    4. Britz, Wolfgang & van der Mensbrugghe, Dominique, 2017. "A flexible, modular and extendable framework for CGE analysis in GAMS," Conference papers 332918, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    5. Pahmeyer, Christoph & Kuhn, Till & Britz, Wolfgang, 2020. "‘Fruchtfolge’: A crop rotation decision support system for optimizing cropping choices with big data and spatially explicit modeling," Discussion Papers 305287, University of Bonn, Institute for Food and Resource Economics.
    6. Britz, Wolfgang & Ciaian, Pavel & Gocht, Alexander & Kanellopoulos, Argyris & Kremmydas, Dimitrios & Müller, Marc & Petsakos, Athanasios & Reidsma, Pytrik, 2021. "A design for a generic and modular bio-economic farm model," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    7. Klaus Mittenzwei, 2020. "Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Norwegian Agriculture: The Regional and Structural Dimension," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-13, March.
    8. Ferrari, Emanuele & Roson, Roberto Britz, Wolfgang & Britz, Wolfgang & Dudu, Hasan, 2019. "An extented myGTAP model to address subsistence production and sub-national households as a module in CGEBox," Conference papers 333059, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Britz, Wolfgang, 2014. "A New Graphical User Interface Generator for Economic Models and its Comparison to Existing Approaches," Journal of International Agricultural Trade and Development, Journal of International Agricultural Trade and Development, vol. 63(4).
    2. Viaggi, Davide & Raggi, Meri & Gomez y Paloma, Sergio, 2011. "Farm-household investment behaviour and the CAP decoupling: Methodological issues in assessing policy impacts," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 127-145, January.
    3. CARPENTIER, Alain & GOHIN, Alexandre & SCKOKAI, Paolo & THOMAS, Alban, 2015. "Economic modelling of agricultural production: past advances and new challenges," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement (RAEStud), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 96(1), March.
    4. Britz, Wolfgang & Pérez-Dominguez, Ignacio & Narayanan, Gopalakrishnan Badri, 2015. "Analyzing Results from Agricultural Large-scale Economic Simulation Models: Recent Progress and the Way Ahead," German Journal of Agricultural Economics, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Department for Agricultural Economics, vol. 64(02), June.
    5. Lars Schewe & Martin Schmidt & Johannes Thürauf, 2020. "Computing technical capacities in the European entry-exit gas market is NP-hard," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 295(1), pages 337-362, December.
    6. Shouxiang Wang & Shuangchen Yuan, 2019. "Interval Energy Flow Analysis in Integrated Electrical and Natural-Gas Systems Considering Uncertainties," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-19, May.
    7. Brian Sergi & Kwabena Pambour, 2022. "An Evaluation of Co-Simulation for Modeling Coupled Natural Gas and Electricity Networks," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-18, July.
    8. Luis Contesse & Juan Ferrer & Sergio Maturana, 2005. "A Mixed-Integer Programming Model for Gas Purchase and Transportation," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 139(1), pages 39-63, October.
    9. repec:cty:dpaper:10.1080/0013791x.2011.573615 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Beyza, Jesus & Ruiz-Paredes, Hector F. & Garcia-Paricio, Eduardo & Yusta, Jose M., 2020. "Assessing the criticality of interdependent power and gas systems using complex networks and load flow techniques," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 540(C).
    11. Duan, Jiandong & Liu, Fan & Yang, Yao, 2022. "Optimal operation for integrated electricity and natural gas systems considering demand response uncertainties," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 323(C).
    12. Guna Salputra & Myrna van Leeuwen & Petra Salamon & Thomas Fellmann & Martin Banse & Oliver Ledebur, 2013. "The agri-food sector in Russia: Current situation and market outlook until 2025," JRC Research Reports JRC76915, Joint Research Centre.
    13. Tianhu Deng & Yong Liang & Shixuan Zhang & Jingze Ren & Shuyi Zheng, 2019. "A Dynamic Programming Approach to Power Consumption Minimization in Gunbarrel Natural Gas Networks with Nonidentical Compressor Units," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 593-611, July.
    14. Javad Estakhr & Mohsen Simab & Taher Niknam, 2021. "Security Analysis of Hybrid Multi-Carrier Energy Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-21, March.
    15. Garbert, Johanna & Holm-Mueller, Karin, 2015. "Impacts of policies to implement the EU Water Framework Directive on development strategies and income of typical pig farms in an intensively farmed region of Germany," Discussion Papers 206384, University of Bonn, Institute for Food and Resource Economics.
    16. Cao, Maosen & Shao, Changzheng & Hu, Bo & Xie, Kaigui & Zhou, Jiahao & Leng, Haimo & Zhang, Weixin, 2022. "Reliability tracing of the integrated energy system using the improved shapley value," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    17. Ralf Lenz & Kai Helge Becker, 2022. "Optimization of capacity expansion in potential-driven networks including multiple looping: a comparison of modelling approaches," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 44(1), pages 179-224, March.
    18. Liu, Yongchao & Xu, Huifu & Yang, Shu-Jung Sunny & Zhang, Jin, 2018. "Distributionally robust equilibrium for continuous games: Nash and Stackelberg models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 265(2), pages 631-643.
    19. Thomas Fellmann & Myrna Leeuwen & Petra Salamon & Ali Koc & Gulden Boluk, 2012. "EU Enlargement to Turkey: Potential Effects on Turkey’s Agricultural Income and Markets," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 2(2), pages 1-16, December.
    20. Li, Bei & Roche, Robin, 2020. "Optimal scheduling of multiple multi-energy supply microgrids considering future prediction impacts based on model predictive control," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    21. Ratha, Anubhav & Pinson, Pierre & Le Cadre, Hélène & Virag, Ana & Kazempour, Jalal, 2023. "Moving from linear to conic markets for electricity," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(2), pages 762-783.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:gjagec:253198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iahubde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.