TY - JOUR
T1 - A virtual environment for the formulation of policy packages
AU - Taeihagh, Araz
AU - Bañares-Alcántara, René
AU - Givoni, Moshe
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was partly funded by the Visions of the Role of Walking and Cycling in 2030 EPSRC project (Ref: EP/G000468/1) and was linked to the OPTIC project, funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013, see http://optic.toi.no/ ).
PY - 2014/2
Y1 - 2014/2
N2 - The interdependence and complexity of socio-technical systems and availability of a wide variety of policy measures to address policy problems make the process of policy formulation difficult. In order to formulate sustainable and efficient transport policies, development of new tools and techniques is necessary. One of the approaches gaining ground is policy packaging, which shifts focus from implementation of individual policy measures to implementation of combinations of measures with the aim of increasing efficiency and effectiveness of policy interventions by increasing synergies and reducing potential contradictions among policy measures. In this paper, we describe the development of a virtual environment for the exploration and analysis of different configurations of policy measures in order to build policy packages. By developing systematic approaches it is possible to examine more alternatives at a greater depth, decrease the time required for the overall analysis, provide real-time assessment and feedback on the effect of changes in the configurations, and ultimately form more effective policies. The results from this research demonstrate the usefulness of computational approaches in addressing the complexity inherent in the formulation of policy packages. This new approach has been applied to the formulation of policies to advance sustainable transportation.
AB - The interdependence and complexity of socio-technical systems and availability of a wide variety of policy measures to address policy problems make the process of policy formulation difficult. In order to formulate sustainable and efficient transport policies, development of new tools and techniques is necessary. One of the approaches gaining ground is policy packaging, which shifts focus from implementation of individual policy measures to implementation of combinations of measures with the aim of increasing efficiency and effectiveness of policy interventions by increasing synergies and reducing potential contradictions among policy measures. In this paper, we describe the development of a virtual environment for the exploration and analysis of different configurations of policy measures in order to build policy packages. By developing systematic approaches it is possible to examine more alternatives at a greater depth, decrease the time required for the overall analysis, provide real-time assessment and feedback on the effect of changes in the configurations, and ultimately form more effective policies. The results from this research demonstrate the usefulness of computational approaches in addressing the complexity inherent in the formulation of policy packages. This new approach has been applied to the formulation of policies to advance sustainable transportation.
KW - Agent-based modelling
KW - Decision support systems
KW - Policy formulation
KW - Policy packaging
KW - Transport policy
KW - Virtual environments
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84894267991&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.tra.2013.10.017
DO - 10.1016/j.tra.2013.10.017
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AN - SCOPUS:84894267991
SN - 0965-8564
VL - 60
SP - 53
EP - 68
JO - Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
JF - Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
ER -
