Agent-Based Modelling for the Transition to a Circular Economy: Addressing Market Dynamics and Policy Interventions

Description

In this agent-based model, I aim to model circular practices in businesses. I specifically focus on the area of non-renewable and finite resources. I use the idea of a material pool to represent the reuse, recycling, repairing, and refurbishing of raw materials within the business. I assume a profit-maximization strategy by the companies and look at how different regulatory policies and consumer preferences impact the choices the effects on the profit of the businesses. I also look at the spatial implications on such a model, when the businesses are located throughout space.

Table of Contents

• Description
• Features
• Installation
• Usage
• Contributing
• License
• Acknowledgements

Features

• Feature 1: "Monopolistic" setup - each company has access to its own set of raw resources and there is no competition in the market.
• Feature 2: "Competitive" setup - each company shares access to one set of raw resources and there is competition in the market.
• Feature 3: "Spatial" influence - here I look at the effect of spatial dynamics in the competitive market. I consider both cases in which everyone in the space shares the same resources as well as when there are different resources in each zone.

Installation

Prerequisites

• The requirements.txt file contains all libraries required.

Steps

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/ethz-coss/circular-businesses-model.git
   cd circular-businesses-model

2. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

Usage

1. Update the parameters.txt file with your desired parameters.
2. Run the main.py file.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please fork the repository, make your changes, and submit a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgements

1. This framework was developed as part of a study on transitioning to a circular economy.
2. More details are available in the report Agent-Based Modelling for the Transition to a Circular Economy: Addressing Market Dynamics and Policy Interventions.pf
3. Generative artificial intelligence technologies were used in this project for code generation and report editing.