GAINS – An Interactive Tool for Assessing International GHG Mitigation Regimes

Multi-model Framework for modeling Holistic Climate and Air quality Strategies

“…Our research area of integrated assessment related to climate change is an example of these issues, where the effects of future climate on social, economic and ecosystems are investigated [4,10,14]. There are several specific questions that the model can answer [4,2], like "How much would a migration from one technology to another, more effective one, cost and how much emissions would it save?…”

“…multidimensional data model, which has been introduced in our previous literatures [11,5,10], models and their linked models. Data from different sources, e.g.…”

“…However, there is growing recognition that a comprehensive and combined analysis of air pollution and climate change could reveal important synergies of emission control measures [10], which could be of high policy relevance. While scientific understanding on many individual aspects of air pollution and climate change has considerably increased in the last years, little attention has been paid to a holistic analysis of the interactions between both problems.…”

“…Afterward, EC4MACS is introduced as a concrete case study used to explain the basic workings of the just-specified multimodel framework. In this context, data from multiple models are integrated into the GAINS multidimensional database [4,10,14]. Furthermore, the business intelligent toolbox [9] can be considered as a suite to make available and to compare the implications of the outputs of different system models working at various spatial and temporal scales.…”

“…While scientific understanding on many individual aspects of air pollution and climate change has considerably increased in the last years, little attention has been paid to a holistic analysis of the interactions between both problems. In this context, the Greenhouse gas Air pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model [4,10,14] has been developed as a tool to identify emission control strategies that achieve given targets on air quality and greenhouse gas emissions at least costs. However, GAINS does not include the simulation of behavioural changes of consumers that influence demand for energy, transport and agriculture; also responses of the energy and agricultural markets towards higher emission control costs are outside its systems boundaries, and it does not address effects that higher pollution control costs might have on the transfer of production to third countries.…”