Agent-based Modeling And Policy Simulation Of Waste-exchange System: The Case Of Yixing Economic Development Zone

As an important behavior in industrial symbiosis, waste-exchange have been facinggreat chanlleges in practice. In our research, the evolution and exchange mechanism ofwaste-exchange in industrial ecology system is studied, using the agent-based modelingmethod. We first built up the waste-exchange model based on the agent-based idea andour knowledge of the waste-exchange system. Then we develop the simulation programbased on Swarm platform. Finally, using the Jiangsu Yixing Economic develop Zone asa case, we studied the evolution of the exchange behavior. The main conclusionsinclude:1. There exists equilibrium for the studied system which could be attained. Theprice index and the number of enaging firms could reach a stable state at round100thsimulation period.2. There is a gap between the system performance and the ideal situation. Theactual exchange quantity in15thyear is less than half of the ideal quantity at the sametime, and for the number of enaging firms, the gap is1/3of the ideal number.3. Three types of inter-industry exchange appear during evolution: constructionmaterial industry as buyer, other exchange within different industries, and exchangewithin one industry. The first type appears at early stage of evolution, while the other2appear much later.4. Under certain conditions, policy instrument can promote the exchange behavior.As we can see from the simulation results, by increase initial account, subside rate andwaste treating cost, the government can increase the exchange quantity of the system.5. Several complex adadptive behavior have appear during evolution, includingself-regulation, adaptation, self-organlzed criticality and emergence.