Application of an agent-based system as a virtual environment for the formulation of policies

• Main Authors: TAEIHAGH, Araz, Bañares-Alcántara, René, Givoni, Moshe
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2011
• Subjects: Policy formulation; agent-based modelling; decision support systems; policy packaging; network analysis; Energy Policy; Environmental Policy; Political Science; Transportation
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2116; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3373/viewcontent/1270_3791_1_PB__1_.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The growth in the interdependence and complexity of socio-economic systems requires the development of tools and techniques to aid us in the formulation of better policies. Our efforts focus towards developing methodologies and support tools for better policy design and formulation. In this paper, we focus on the development of an agent-based approach to create a virtual environment for the exploration and analysis of different configurations of policy measures in order to build policy packages and test the effects of changes and uncertainties while formulating policies. By developing systematic approaches for the formulation andanalysis of policies it is possible to analyse different alternatives at a greater depth, examine more alternatives, decrease the time required for the overall analysis, provide real-time assessment and feedback to the domain experts on the effect of changes in the configurations, and ultimately form more effective policies with synergistic and reinforcing attributes while avoiding internal contradictions. The results from this research demonstrate the usefulness of computational approaches in addressing the complexity inherent in the formulation of polices. This new Application of an Agent-Based System as a Virtual Environment for the Formulation of Policies approach has been applied to the formulation of policies that deal with transportationissues and emission reduction but can be extended to other domains.