Multimode

Objectives :

Thus, the overall aim of MultiMode is to promote sustainable development in Belgium in a globalised context through the development of an integrated, multi-scale modelling framework of human economic activities and associated land uses. The modelling framework will combine top-down and bottom-up models that address both urban and rural land use, but given the importance (in spatial terms) of agricultural land use, a particular focus will be on the sustainability of farming practices. The specific research objectives are:

• to construct sets of future scenarios based on narrative storylines using existing knowledge about global drivers of environmental change (policy, demographic, economic, climate and technological), and a knowledge of European policies that respond to these global drivers. The global scenarios and policy options will be made available for subsequent analyses using a meta-model;
• to model demographic, economic, environmental (including land use) changes at different embedded spatial scales resulting from global drivers and European policies and the adaptation, mitigation or reinforcement measures of planning and policy authorities at each level using a constrained cellular automata model;
• to evaluate the adaptive behaviour of land use decision-makers at different administrative levels in selected case studies in Belgium using an agent-based model and generate knowledge on adaptation processes to support the transition rules in the cellular automata model;
• to represent the decision-making processes of land use agents in a social behavioural model and thus generate information for building decision rules for the agent-based model;
• to analyse the sustainable practices of farmers in selected communities by using socio-economic assessment procedures and participatory approaches based on stakeholder dialogue;
• to test and validate the scenarios, assumptions and results of the models at different scales of analysis by obtaining feedback from stakeholders through meetings with the follow-up committee, focus groups and a final project workshop; and
• to generate multi-scale measures (indicators) of social, economic and ecological sustainability by integrating the empirical knowledge generated from the meta-model, cellular automata, agent-based model, social behavioural model and stakeholder involvement.