×I8. Modelling, optimisation and stakeholder engagement to support agricultural transformation

In many parts of the world, today’s agricultural production contributes to a significant part of the greenhouse gas production, material discharges through intensive farming and the ongoing decline of biodiversity. At the social and political level, thus a need to transform agriculture towards ecological sustainability and multifunctional landscapes has been recognized. Many models and methods have been developed by scientists that address specific parts of this problem, e.g. hydrological and biodiversity models to describe changes in ecosystems, agent-based models simulating socio-economic processes of the agricultural system or multi-criteria optimization identifying optimal land-use allocations. However, methods supporting a successful transformation of agriculture should ideally consider socio-economic as well as biophysical aspects, uncertainty in all its facets, climate change, and stakeholder preferences and – on top of all – results should be relevant for their practical implementation. Hence, in this session we seek recent methods and applications of optimization approaches in the context of water, land and environmental management projects (including political and/or socio-economic aspects) with strong stakeholder involvement that aim at solving real-world problems in agricultural landscapes. Submissions focused on applications are encouraged; they may be related to water and agri-environmental management, land use allocations, biodiversity protection, and the adoption of sustainable technology and management. Methodological advancements may include but are not limited to the genres of game theory, evolutionary and hybrid algorithms, operations research, hierarchical optimization, or agent-based modelling.

Key topics: Optimisation, Integrated modelling, Stakeholder involvement and preferences, Solving real-world problems