Creating Agent-Based Energy Transition Management Models That Can Uncover Profitable Pathways to Climate Change Mitigation

Table 2

Characteristics of different types of systems and accompanying simulation techniques.

	Equilibrium	Dynamic systems	Complex adaptive systems
Model characterization	Static	Dynamic	Adaptive
System creation	Top-down	Top-down	Bottom-up
Transition & resistance	Invisible	Observed as aggregate	Can be traced back to individual agents
Dynamic parts of model	Inputs	Relationships & inputs	Actors, behaviors, relationships & inputs
Dominant paradigm	Equilibrium (CGE)	SD and DES	Agent based modelling (ABM)
Simulated system	No simulation	Predefined system	System emerges during runtime
Strong feedback loops	No	Yes (especially SD)	Yes
Spatial awareness	Hard	Yes (especially DES)	Yes
Heterogeneous actors	Hard	Yes (especially DES)	Yes
Emergent behavior	No	No	Yes
Actors can interact	No	No	Yes
Actors can learn	No	No	Yes