Modelling Multi-stakeholder Systems: A Case Study

A contemporary governance challenge for governments concerns the biogas domain: what incentives and policies can lead to a viable biogas economy? To support addressing this challenge, a prototype of a simulator is constructed in which horizontal governance is applied in a multi-stakeholder context. This paper reports on the modelling and knowledge acquisition that led to the development of that prototype. Rather than (re)inventing tooling, three available agent-based modelling approaches are combined: the MAIA meta-model, OperA and GENIUS, with Agents cape as the agent-based middleware for the realisation of the simulator. The resulting simulator has been validated by biogas experts from Alliander (NL-based energy network company), leading to confirmation that our combined approach was useful for the analysis of this multi-stakeholder domain.