A philosophical case for process-based modelling of land use change

Abstract

Modelling is used to describe, explore and predict changes in land use and other human systems. 'Top-down' and 'bottom-up' modelling approaches are both popular, and each has important philosophical implications that correspond closely to major debates in social science. We outline some key contributions to these debates and argue that social processes such as those underlying land use decisions are fundamentally determined by individual intentionality, interacting with social norms of language, culture and institutions, rather than by general and predictable 'laws'. Therefore, bottom-up models that reflect these processes offer far more informative accounts of system development. However, prediction remains outside the scope of either approach, and methods of validation based on tests of historical predictive ability risk over-fitting to trends and underestimating uncertainties. We explore the implications of these arguments for model design and use, and for general understanding of such fundamentally complex, spontaneously evolving systems.

Behavioral models of climate change adaptation and mitigation in land‐based sectors

“…Of course, it is not necessarily the case that ever‐greater behavioral accuracy is either desirable or possible. Not all forms of individual and social behaviors are amenable to modeling, but the identification of limits is a complex problem involving philosophical and practical considerations 26,27,29,114 . For example, it may not be possible to usefully simulate the decisions of any particular individual but perfectly possible to explore the effects of particular forms of decision‐making, and while culture may not be reducible to model algorithms, specific differences in perceptions can be.…”

“…Individual adaptations or mitigations further depend upon, for example, values, knowledge, and perceived personal efficacy . Indeed, subjective perceptions of change and responsive choices may not align well with concepts of mitigation and adaptation that appear obvious to an outside observer, instead passing through ‘several layers of institutional, moral and symbolic meaning (Ref , p. 76),’ each of which may be interpreted differently by the various actors involved …”

Emerging Opportunities for Landscape Ecological Modelling

“…breeding rates, dispersal characteristics). However, models involving more dynamic processes, especially those related to human behaviour, may only be able to achieve reasonable, as opposed to fully Bvalid^, representations [236]. In such cases, model transparency becomes crucial, along with verification of intermediate simulation outputs through modular testing [237], and rigorous exploration of model behaviour through experiments or sensitivity and uncertainty analyses [238].…”

Towards representing human behavior and decision making in Earth system models – an overview of techniques and approaches

“…The complexity of land-use change provides various examples of how collective and individual decision making interacts with the environment across spatial scales and organizational levels. Land-use models consider environmental conditions as important factors in decisionmaking processes, giving rise to feedbacks between environmental and socioeconomic dynamics (Brown et al, 2016). However, this paper does not provide an exhaustive overview of existing land-use models.…”

“…Subsystems of such models comprise the human population (sometimes disaggregated between regions and age groups), the agricultural and industrial sector, and the state of the environment (pollution and resource availability). Simpler models describe the dynamics of only a few aggregated variables at the global level (Kellie-Smith and Cox, 2011) or confined to a region (Brander and Taylor, 1998).…”