Research • Educate • Connect
Towards a sustainable bioeconomy

Research • Educate • Connect
Towards a sustainable bioeconomy

Economic Modelling of Agricultural Systems | Universität Bonn

 

PD Dr. Wolfgang Britz

Core Group Homepage

 

Research topics and profile (related to bioeconomy)

The focus of the work of “Economic Modelling of Agricultural Systems Group” is on the development and application of economic simulation models from farm to global scale to analyze quantitatively questions related to sustainability and provision of eco-systems services by agri-food systems. The group, established in 2017, serves as a hub for economic modeling in research and teaching at institute and faculty level. Our team develops and applies different Economic Simulation Models and related methodologies, often in large-scale applications, such as dynamic stochastic single farm optimization model or global Computable General Equilibrium models to analyze questions related to the bioeconomy from an economic perspective.

The software backbone of our models is the Algebraic Modeling language GAMS, driven by Graphical User Interfaces implemented in Java. Specific applications include for instance mixed-integer, dynamic and stochastic programming, large-scale non-linear and bi-level programming, mixed complementarity problems or constrained systems of non-linear equations. Drawing on computing servers available at institute level, we apply parallel computing, inter alia for large-scale sensitivity analysis. Our models are hosted on a software versioning system, adhere to coding standards and implement quality management based on test suites.

Our group is integrated in the research topics of the agricultural faculty in Bonn, especially in the fields of mathematical modelling of agricultural system, balanced dairy system and agricultural system: eco-system services and risks.

Contributions to BioSC

Economy and social implications of the bioeconomy: Quantitative, model-based analysis of innovations in the bioeconomy from farm to global scale