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A Typology for Characterizing Human Action in MultiSector Dynamics Models
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  • Jim Yoon,
  • Patricia Romero-Lankao,
  • Yi-Chen Ethan Yang,
  • Christian Joachim Anton Klassert,
  • Nathan M Urban,
  • Kendra Elena Kaiser,
  • Klaus Keller,
  • Brinda Yarlagadda,
  • Nathalie Voisin,
  • Patrick M. Reed,
  • Richard H Moss
Jim Yoon
PNNL

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Patricia Romero-Lankao
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
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Yi-Chen Ethan Yang
Lehigh University
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Christian Joachim Anton Klassert
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
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Nathan M Urban
Brookhaven National Laboratory
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Kendra Elena Kaiser
Boise State University
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Klaus Keller
Pennsylvania State University
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Brinda Yarlagadda
University of Maryland
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Nathalie Voisin
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (DOE)
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Patrick M. Reed
Cornell University
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Richard H Moss
PNNL
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Abstract

The role of individual and collective human action is increasingly recognized as a prominent and arguably paramount determinant in shaping the behavior, trajectory, and vulnerability of multisector systems. This human influence operates at multiple scales: from short-term (hourly to daily) to long-term (annually to centennial) timescales, and from the local to the global, pushing systems towards either desirable or undesirable outcomes. However, the effort to represent human systems in multisector models has been fragmented across philosophical, methodological, and disciplinary lines. To cohere insights across diverse modeling approaches, we present a new typology for classifying how human actors are represented in the broad suite of coupled human-natural system models that are applied in MultiSector Dynamics (MSD) research. The typology conceptualizes a “sector” as a system-of-systems that includes a diverse group of human actors, defined across individual to collective social levels, involved in governing, provisioning, and utilizing products, goods, or services towards some human end. We trace the salient features of modeled representations of human systems by organizing the typology around three key questions: 1) Who are the actors in MSD systems? 2) What are their actions? 3) How and for what purpose are these actors and actions operationalized in a computational model? We use this typology to critically examine existing models and chart the frontier of human systems modeling for MSD research.