Participatory system dynamics modelling for housing, energy and wellbeing interactions

The built environment is a key target of decarbonization policies. However, such policies often have a narrow objective and narrow focus, resulting in ‘policy-resistance’ and unintended consequences. The literature attributes these unintended consequences to a narrow financial focus, adverse incentives, and inadequate handling of knowledge, skills, communication and feedback gaps, but it provides little advice on how these complex interactions can be captured. This paper illustrates the development and application of an integrated approach to address these complex interactions with regard to housing performance, energy, communal spaces and wellbeing. In particular, it explores the dynamics created by these relationships with simulation modelling in participatory settings, and with a diverse group of stakeholders. The simulation results suggest that monitoring is key to improve the performance of the housing stock besides energy efficiency; and investments in communal spaces positively affect the adoption of energy-efficiency measures and the wellbeing of residents. The evaluation results for participatory workshops show this approach was found useful by the stakeholders for supporting more integrated decision-making about housing. In future research, this approach can be implemented for policy problems in specific contexts

Integrating GMB and Games in the Built Environment

This placeholder submission describes a study at University College London (UCL) that is currently underway integrating Group Model Building (GMB) process with a system dynamics (SD) based simulation game towards increasing consensus among stakeholders. During game play participants will make the decisions, first as individuals and then as groups. The game is designed as two stage process. The first stage is a trial-driven process, played before the model structure has been revealed and explained. In the second round, analysis-driven process will predominate following a description of the underlying structure(Van Daalen et al., 2014). Our hypothesis is that stakeholders with greater levels of ownership due to participation in the GMB workshops will have better outcomes regarding shared understanding, commitment, systems thinking, insight and consensus. The final model will be integrated website of the UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering to enable continuous learning among participants and create a window into the study for a broader audience. This work builds on the qualitative application of SD conducted by Macmillan et al. (2016) and Shrubsole et al. (2014) as part of an integrated project on housing, energy and wellbeing (HEW)