20 November 2017 Silico Lecture: Émile Chappin on "How to escape the modelling crisis''

What about?
When trying to improve complex systems, models
may be very useful. Unfortunately, many projects fall into a ‘modelling
crisis’, caught between complexity and the limits of modelling paradigms. Delft University of Technology, faculty of Systems Engineering and Policy Analysis, grapples with these issues on a daily basis, and inspirational speaker Émile Chappin of that faculty teaches about them. He uses the example of energy transition models, important in circular economy times.

Escaping the modelling crisis
It is a strong challenge to develop useful models grasping parts of the
energy transition, amongst others because of problems in selecting a system boundary and managing uncertainties. Models are nevertheless important in order to design policies needed for a ‘successful’ energy transition.

Modellers are often well aware about the limitations that models have.
The limitations can become so dominant that the model may be seen as not useful at all. Emile will speak about how to get out a typical modelling crisis, in the context of modelling and simulation of complex socio-technical systems.

Émile Chappin
Dr.ir. Emile Chappin is an assistant professor, Energy and Industry,
Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, TU Delft and a senior research fellow in the Wuppertal Institute for Energy, Climate and Environment. He specializes in agent-based modelling with a focus on energy and sustainability, carbon and renewables policies, energy markets, and adaptation to climate change. He focuses on modelling energy transition from the perspective of complex socio-technical systems and uses (agent-based) models and serious games to enable the support of policy interventions. With collaborative, multidisciplinary research work, as a promotor of open source software, he feeds the scientific and societal debate on energy transition. He graduated in Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management at TU Delft. He obtained his PhD from Delft University of Technology – ”Simulating Energy Transitions”.