IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jas/jasssj/2014-102-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pathways to Truth: Comparing Different Upscaling Options for an Agent-Based Sector Model

Author

Abstract

Simulation results can be highly sensitive to the way agents are upscaled to a larger organizational and spatial level. This paper tests an ex-post validation method for forecasting models by using old base years and forecasting into recent years for which observed data is already available. Our case in point is a comparison between different upscaling methods in the agent-based agricultural sector model SWISSland. It is shown that individual-farm extrapolation factors strongly enhance alignment with the total population in the base year. However, they may cause inconsistencies in those agent-based models in which relations between the farms are an important part. Therefore, an adjustment of the sample by making almost no use of some farms whilst making highly disproportionate use of others turned out to be the most suitable method for the SWISSland model.

Suggested Citation

  • Albert Zimmermann & Anke Möhring & Gabriele Mack & Ali Ferjani & Stefan Mann, 2015. "Pathways to Truth: Comparing Different Upscaling Options for an Agent-Based Sector Model," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 18(4), pages 1-11.
    • Handle: RePEc:jas:jasssj:2014-102-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jasss.org/18/4/11/11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. der Straeten, Bart Van & Buysse, Jeroen & Nolte, Stephan & Lauwers, Ludwig & Claeys, Dakerlia & Van Huylenbroeck, Guido, 2011. "Markets of concentration permits: The case of manure policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 2098-2104, September.
    2. Calabrese, Chiara & Mack, Gabriele, 2011. "Evaluation of political control instruments for the Swiss alpine region," 122nd Seminar, February 17-18, 2011, Ancona, Italy 99370, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Bert, Federico E. & Podestá, Guillermo P. & Rovere, Santiago L. & Menéndez, Ángel N. & North, Michael & Tatara, Eric & Laciana, Carlos E. & Weber, Elke & Toranzo, Fernando Ruiz, 2011. "An agent based model to simulate structural and land use changes in agricultural systems of the argentine pampas," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(19), pages 3486-3499.
    4. Berger, Thomas & Schreinemachers, Pepijn & Woelcke, Johannes, 2006. "Multi-agent simulation for the targeting of development policies in less-favored areas," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 28-43, April.
    5. Lobianco, Antonello & Esposti, Roberto, 2010. "The Regional Multi-Agent Simulator (RegMAS): an open-source spatially explicit model to assess the impact of agricultural policies," MPRA Paper 25817, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    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. Utomo, Dhanan Sarwo & Onggo, Bhakti Stephan & Eldridge, Stephen, 2018. "Applications of agent-based modelling and simulation in the agri-food supply chains," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(3), pages 794-805.
    2. Schmidt, Alena & Necpalova, Magdalena & Mack, Gabriele & Möhring, Anke & Six, Johan, 2021. "A food tax only minimally reduces the N surplus of Swiss agriculture," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    3. Schaefer, David & Britz, Wolfgang & Kuhn, Till, 2020. "Modelling policy induced manure transports at large scale using an agent-based simulation model," Discussion Papers 305270, University of Bonn, Institute for Food and Resource Economics.
    4. Schmidt, Alena & Mack, Gabriele & Möhring, Anke & Mann, Stefan & El Benni, Nadja, 2019. "Stricter cross-compliance standards in Switzerland: Economic and environmental impacts at farm- and sector-level," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    5. Alena Schmidt & Magdalena Necpalova & Albert Zimmermann & Stefan Mann & Johan Six & Gabriele Mack, 2017. "Direct and Indirect Economic Incentives to Mitigate Nitrogen Surpluses: A Sensitivity Analysis," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 20(4), pages 1-7.
    6. Zantsi, Siphe & Mack, Gabriele & Möhring, Anke & Cloete, Kandas & Greyling, Jan C & Mann, Stefan, 2024. "How can South Africa’s land redistribution succeed? An agent-based modelling approach for assessing structural and economic impacts," IAAE 2024 Conference, August 2-7, 2024, New Delhi, India 344233, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).
    7. Huber, Robert & Bakker, Martha & Balmann, Alfons & Berger, Thomas & Bithell, Mike & Brown, Calum & Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne & Xiong, Hang & Le, Quang Bao & Mack, Gabriele & Meyfroidt, Patrick & Millingt, 2018. "Representation of decision-making in European agricultural agent-based models," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 143-160.
    8. Egger, Claudine & Plutzar, Christoph & Mayer, Andreas & Dullinger, Iwona & Dullinger, Stefan & Essl, Franz & Gattringer, Andreas & Bohner, Andreas & Haberl, Helmut & Gaube, Veronika, 2022. "Using the SECLAND model to project future land-use until 2050 under climate and socioeconomic change in the LTSER region Eisenwurzen (Austria)," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    9. Mack, G. & Finger, R. & Ammann, J. & El Benni, N., 2023. "Modelling policies towards pesticide-free agricultural production systems," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    10. Mack, Gabriele & Ferjani, Ali & Mohring, Anke & Zimmerman, Albert & Mann, Stefan, 2015. "How did farmers act? An ex-post validation of normative and positive mathematical programming for an agent-based sector model," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212201, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

    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. Coronese, Matteo & Occelli, Martina & Lamperti, Francesco & Roventini, Andrea, 2023. "AgriLOVE: Agriculture, land-use and technical change in an evolutionary, agent-based model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    2. Bert, Federico E. & Rovere, Santiago L. & Macal, Charles M. & North, Michael J. & Podestá, Guillermo P., 2014. "Lessons from a comprehensive validation of an agent based-model: The experience of the Pampas Model of Argentinean agricultural systems," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 273(C), pages 284-298.
    3. Kremmydas, Dimitris & Athanasiadis, Ioannis N. & Rozakis, Stelios, 2018. "A review of Agent Based Modeling for agricultural policy evaluation," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 95-106.
    4. Utomo, Dhanan Sarwo & Onggo, Bhakti Stephan & Eldridge, Stephen, 2018. "Applications of agent-based modelling and simulation in the agri-food supply chains," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(3), pages 794-805.
    5. Malawska, Anna & Topping, Christopher John, 2016. "Evaluating the role of behavioral factors and practical constraints in the performance of an agent-based model of farmer decision making," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 136-146.
    6. Elodie Letort & Pierre Dupraz & Laurent Piet, 2017. "The impact of environmental regulations on the farmland market and farm structures: An agent-based model applied to the Brittany region of France," Working Papers SMART 17-01, INRAE UMR SMART.
    7. Johanna CHOUMERT & Pascale PHELINAS, 2015. "Farmland Rental Values in GM Soybean Areas of Argentina: Do Contractual Arrangements Matter?," Working Papers 201532, CERDI.
    8. Fastelli, Laura & Landi, Chiara & Rovai, Massimo & Andreoli, Maria, 2017. "A spatial analysis of terrain features and farming styles in a disadvantaged area of Tuscany (Mugello): implications for the evaluation and the design of CAP payments," Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), vol. 6(01), May.
    9. Fastelli, Laura & Rovai, Massimo & Andreoli, Maria, 2018. "A Spatial Integrated Database for the Enhancement of the Agricultural Custodianship Role (SIDECAR)—Some preliminary tests using Tuscany as a case-study Region," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 791-802.
    10. Arora, Poonam & Bert, Federico & Podesta, Guillermo & Krantz, David H., 2015. "Ownership effect in the wild: Influence of land ownership on agribusiness goals and decisions in the Argentine Pampas," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 162-170.
    11. Hajdu, Anna & Daziano, Marcos F. & Visser, Oane, 2021. "Institutions and individual values motivating corporate social responsibility activities in large farms and agroholdings," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 24(4), April.
    12. Buysse, Jeroen & Frija, Aymen & Van der Straeten, Bart & Nolte, Stephan & Lauwers, Ludwig H. & Claeys, Dakerlia & Van Huylenbroeck, Guido, 2011. "The sampling bias in multi-agent simulation models," 122nd Seminar, February 17-18, 2011, Ancona, Italy 99599, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    13. Ran Sun & James Nolan & Suren Kulshreshtha, 2022. "Agent-based modeling of policy induced agri-environmental technology adoption," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 2(8), pages 1-26, August.
    14. Matteo Coronese & Martina Occelli & Francesco Lamperti & Andrea Roventini, 2024. "Towards sustainable agriculture: behaviors, spatial dynamics and policy in an evolutionary agent-based model," LEM Papers Series 2024/05, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.
    15. Feola, Giuseppe & Binder, Claudia R., 2010. "Towards an improved understanding of farmers' behaviour: The integrative agent-centred (IAC) framework," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 2323-2333, October.
    16. Tian, Qing & Holland, John H. & Brown, Daniel G., 2016. "Social and economic impacts of subsidy policies on rural development in the Poyang Lake Region, China: Insights from an agent-based model," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 12-27.
    17. Zeng, Yangmei & He, Ke & Zhang, Junbiao & Li, Ping, 2023. "Adoption and ex-post impacts of sustainable manure management practices on income and happiness: Evidence from swine breeding farmers in rural Hubei, China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    18. Mustafa, Ahmed & Cools, Mario & Saadi, Ismaïl & Teller, Jacques, 2017. "Coupling agent-based, cellular automata and logistic regression into a hybrid urban expansion model (HUEM)," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 529-540.
    19. Huang, Shiyang & Hu, Guiping, 2018. "Biomass supply contract pricing and environmental policy analysis: A simulation approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 557-566.
    20. Videla-Mensegue, H. & Caviglia, O.P. & Sadras, V.O., 2022. "Functional crop types are more important than diversity for the productivity, profit and risk of crop sequences in the inner Argentinean Pampas," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).

    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:jas:jasssj:2014-102-3. 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: Francesco Renzini (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.