IAMC wiki

Background

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) and energy-economy models have become central tools for informing decision makers and society at large about the choices for long-term global and regional climate mitigation strategies. There is an increasing demand for improved representations of complex energy, climate and land-use system interactions and thorough validation of model behavior in order to increase user confidence in climate policy assessments. The ADVANCE project, sponsored by the European Commission under its 7th Framework Programme, responds to this demand by facilitating the development of a new generation of IAMs. In the past, methodological innovations and improvements in IAMs and their application to policy making were hindered by the difficulties in communicating complexities in modeling and data approaches. The ADVANCE project is trying to make a coordinated effort on improving model transparency, model validation, and data handling.

A central objective of ADVANCE is to provide harmonized documentation that elucidates the structure, assumptions, limitations and input data of all participating IAMs in the ADVANCE project. To make this effort useful beyond the immediate project participants it was decided to start a review process that involves both the broader modeling community as well as stakeholders interested in model results. Beyond the review process, it is planned to invite other modeling teams to also provide their model documentation in the harmonized format developed by the ADVANCE project consortium. So far, documentation for eight models is available and listed in Table 1 below.

Objectives

As part of a consultation process with stakeholders involved in the ADVANCE project, it was decided as a first step to develop documentation at two levels of aggregation. It was envisaged that this approach would be particularly helpful for policy makers and other users of model results in understanding key differences between modeling approaches and the representation of different sectors in IAMs. It thus needs to be emphasized that this documentation was not designed to provide information at a level that would enable other researchers to rebuild models and reproduce the results of existing scenarios. However in principle, the current structure of the harmonized model documentation allows for providing extra information as part of appendices describing a model’s mathematical formulation and input data, although no effort has been made to harmonize the extent or format to which such information is provided. Developing a documentation standard that would include model code as well as input datasets is a potential follow-up activity.

The two levels of aggregation for model documentation are described as:

• “Reference cards” which are designed to provide a quick overview of the most important model characteristics, in the form of bulleted lists and tables. The structure of these 2-page reference cards is identical for all participating models to facilitate an easy comparison of main features across models. The key aim of the reference cards was for an accessible document to provide insight for decision makers.
• More comprehensive documentation (some 30 pages) that use a standardized but flexible template, to describe the models’ specificities. This documentation elucidates model structure, mathematical formulations, and to some extent relevant input data sets. In addition, there is the possibility to include appendices with more detailed information on, for example, mathematical formulations and data sets used. The audience for the documentation is energy-land-climate modelers, technical staff in government and firms, and PhD students and postdoctoral researchers new to the field.

Participating models

Model	Institution
AIM-Enduse India	Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), India, https://www.iima.ac.in/.
AIM-Enduse Japan	Kyoto University (KU), Japan, https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/. National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan, .
AIM-Hub	Kyoto-University (Kyoto-University), Japan, https://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en. National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan, https://www.nies.go.jp/index-e.html.
AIM-Hub Indonesia	Center for Research on Energy Policy Institut Teknologi Bandung (CREP ITB), Indonesia, https://www.crep.itb.ac.id/.
AIM-Hub Korea	(), , .
AIM-Hub Thailand	Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology, Thammasat University (SIIT-TU), Thailand, https://www.siit.tu.ac.th/.
AIM-Hub Viet Nam	Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (HCMIU), Viet Nam, https://ev.hcmiu.edu.vn/en/home/.
BET	Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI), Japan, https://criepi.denken.or.jp/en/.
BLUES	COPPE/UFRJ (Cenergia), Brazil, http://www.cenergialab.coppe.ufrj.br/.
C3IAM	Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology (CEEP-BIT), China, http://ceep.bit.edu.cn/english/.
COFFEE-TEA	COPPE/UFRJ (Cenergia), Brazil, http://www.cenergialab.coppe.ufrj.br/.
China TIMES	Tsinghua University (Tsinghua University), China, https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/en/.
DART	Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Germany, https://www.ifw-kiel.de/.
DNE21+	Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), Japan, http://www.rite.or.jp/en/.
E3ME-FTT	Cambridge Econometrics (CE), United Kingdom, https://www.camecon.com/. Global System Institute, University of Exeter (UNEXE), United Kingdom, https://www.exeter.ac.uk/gsi/. School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystems Sciences, The Open University (OU), United Kingdom, http://www.open.ac.uk/science/environment-earth-ecosystems/.
ENV-Linkages	Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), France, https://www.oecd.org/.
ENVISAGE	The World Bank (World Bank), USA, https://www.worldbank.org/en/home.
EPPA	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, https://globalchange.mit.edu/.
Euro-Calliope	TU Delft (TU Delft), The Netherlands, https://www.tudelft.nl/.
GCAM	Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Joint Global Change Research Institute (PNNL, JGCRI), USA, https://www.pnnl.gov/projects/jgcri.
GCAM-KAIST	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South-Korea, https://www.kaist.ac.kr/en/.
GCAM-KSA	King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), Saudi Arabia, https://www.kapsarc.org/.
GEM-E3	Institute of Communication And Computer Systems (ICCS), Greece, https://www.iccs.gr/en/.
GENeSYS-MOD	Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin), Germany, https://www.diw.de/. Europa-Universität Flensburg (EUF), Germany, https://www.uni-flensburg.de/eum. Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin), Germany, https://wip.tu-berlin.de/.
GMM	Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland, https://www.psi.ch/en.
GRACE	Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), Norway, https://cicero.oslo.no/en.
ICES	Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), Italy, https://www.cmcc.it/.
IFs	Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, University of Denver (Pardee Center), Colorado, USA, https://pardee.du.edu/.
IMACLIM	Centre international de recherche sur l'environnement et le développement (CIRED), France, http://www.centre-cired.fr. Societe de Mathematiques Appliquees et de Sciences Humaines (SMASH), France, http://www.smash.fr.
IMACLIM-India	Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), India, www.iima.ac.in. Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML), India, www.iiml.ac.in.
IMACLIM-NLU	Centre international de recherche sur l'environnement et le développement (CIRED), France, http://www.centre-cired.fr. Societe de Mathematiques Appliquees et de Sciences Humaines (SMASH), France, http://www.smash.fr.
IMAGE	PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), Netherlands, https://www.pbl.nl/en.
IPAC-AIM technology	Energy Research Institute (ERI), China, http://en.cctp.org.cn/m5/product/35982.html.
IPAC-Global	Energy Research Institute (ERI), China, http://en.cctp.org.cn/m5/product/35982.html.
IPETS	National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), USA, https://ncar.ucar.edu/.
MARKAL-India	The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), India, www.teriin.org.
MEDEAS	Group of Energy, Economy and Systems Dynamics, University of Valladolid (GEEDS-UVa), Spain, https://geeds.es/en/.
MERGE-ETL	Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland, https://www.psi.ch/en.
MESSAGE Korea	Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South-Korea, https://www.kaist.ac.kr/en/.
MESSAGE-GLOBIOM	International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria, http://data.ene.iiasa.ac.at.
MIGRATION	Center for the Environment and Kennedy School, Harvard University (Harvard), USA, https://environment.harvard.edu.
MUSE	Imperial College London (Imperial College London), UK, https://www.imperial.ac.uk/.
McKinsey	McKinsey & Company (McKinsey), USA, https://www.mckinsey.com.
POLES	JRC - Joint Research Centre - European Commission (EC-JRC), Belgium, http://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/.
PRIMES	E3Modelling (E3M), Greece, https://e3modelling.com/.
PROMETHEUS	E3Modelling (E3M), Greece, https://e3modelling.com/modelling-tools.
REMIND-MAgPIE	Potsdam Institut für Klimafolgenforschung (PIK), Germany, https://www.pik-potsdam.de.
REMod	Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE), Germany, https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en.html.
RICE50+	Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Italy, https://www.cmcc.it/.
SNOW GL HH	Statistics Norway (SSB), Norway, https://www.ssb.no/en.
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