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Abstract
In order to quantify the effects of a comprehensive
set of policies on land use, interaction between
sectors needs to be accounted for, while maintaining
a high level of detail for each sector. This calls for a
combination of sector specific and sector wide models.
This paper describes such a modelling system, with emphasis
on the linking of the models to a coherent system.
Five sectors of significant importance for land use are
modelled individually: Forestry, agriculture, urban land
use, transport infrastructure, and tourism. All models
are connected as sub-modules to an economy-wide partial
econometric model. In addition, a land cover model
is used to disaggregate land use down to 1km grid resolution.
The linking of such a diverse set of models in a consistent
way poses conceptual as well as practical issues. The
conceptual issues concern questions such as which items
of the models to link, how to obtain a stable joint baseline
scenario, and how to obtain a joint equilibrium solution
for all models simultaneously in simulation. Practical
issues concern the actual implementation of the
conceptually sound linkages and provision of a workable
technical solution.
The linked system allows us to introduce a shock in
either of the models, and the set of results will provide a
joint solution for all sectors modelled in SENSOR. In
this manner, the models take a complex policy scenario
as argument and compute a comprehensive set of variables
involving all five land use sectors on regional level,
which in turn forms a basis for distilling out the impact
on sustainability in the form of indicators. Without the
extensive automation and technical linkages, it would
not have been possible to obtain a joint equilibrium, or it
would have required exorbitant amounts of working
time.