RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM
ENV299Y PROJECT DESCRIPTION #1 - 2015-2016
Name and Title:
Department:
Phone Number:
Dr. Brad Bass, Adjunct Professor
School of the Environment
416-739-4588
Email: [email protected]
TITLE OF RESEARCH PROJECT: Game-theoretic approaches to incentivizing behavioural and environmental
change
NUMBER OF STUDENT PLACES AVAILABLE: 6
OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY: New policies often rely on regulations, guidelines or programs to achieve
the intended outcomes. Economic incentives are another option, and many jurisdictions have piloted trading
schemes that allow polluters to purchase credits, i.e. the right for a fixed amount of pollution, from other
producers who have invested in pollution reduction technology and practices. The objectives of this ROP are to
study incentives from a game-theoretic perspective. The Prisoner’s Dilemma – an game used to analyze
interactions in economics, political science, geography and ecology – will be used to investigate reward
thresholds and strategies that move the outcome from a non-cooperative to a cooperative outcome, i.e. one in
which each individual’s utility is maximized by cooperation. Previous work has suggested one particular solution,
tit-for-tat as the most likely to succeed, and this will be investigated along with other strategies. Other game
theory models are more appropriate for studying pollutant-trading schemes to assess whether it is possible to
arrive at market-based solution that also satisfies a regulatory/ecological objective.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma will be studied with COBWEB (Complexity and Organized Behaviour within
Environmental Bounds – a software package, developed by Professor Bass and U of T students. COBWEB is an
agent-based simulation model, meaning that the actions of each member of a population can be simulated, each
member of the population can learn and populations can evolve novel strategies over time. Experiments are run
in a two-dimensional grid, and the outputs are downloaded into a spreadsheet for display and further analysis.
The analyses range from visual description to statistical analysis to mathematical assessment of chaos,
depending on the interests and experience of the student. Interested students may contact Brad Bass for a copy
of the software.
COBWEB offers opportunities for a very sophisticated simulation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma involving multiple
agents, flexible rewards, multiple strategies and the ability to restrict one-on-one interactions. COBWEB also
allows for the study incentives through rewards on certain learning outcomes, and these may also be included in
this ROP. The Prisoner’s Dilemma can be run in an abstract geography, but COBWEB also allows the users to run
it within an environment, to assess the ecological impacts of the outcome.
GAMBIT is a software package that can be used to analyze pollutant-trading schemes, in particular, it allows
users to search for the equilibrium solution involving multiple players. GAMBIT provides a framework for
entering data on each individual seller and buyer of credits as well as a trade regulator. Although purchasing
credits to pollute has been applied to air quality and to climate change, this ROP will focus on water quality
trading schemes. Water quality trading schemes are being used in Ontario, in Ohio, in the Chesapeake Bay
watershed and in New Zealand. They are controversial and difficult to implement, as the precise measurements
of emissions are not possible from all sectors. GAMBIT does not improve precision, but it does allow the user to
specify uncertainties as appropriate.
This research is intended for students in the economics, political science, geography, psychology, ecology,
mathematics and environmental studies but is open to students in any discipline with a genuine interest in the
issue.
DESCRIPTION OF STUDENT PARTICIPATION:
Students in this ROP will be conducting experiments with COBWEB and/or GAMBIT as well as writing
literature/book reviews and acting as mentors to secondary-school students. The primary activity is the
simulation modeling, and each student will learn how to set up and run the Prisoner’s Dilemma in COBWEB.
After learning how to use the software, students will move onto the other features such as varying the
incentives to cooperate and for non-cooperation and/or varying the preference for interaction. The goal is to
develop societal model simulations that will be inserted into an ecosystem model, where a change in resource
availability could affect both the human population as well as the underlying ecosystem,
From this point, some students will run the ecological simulations while other students move onto GAMBIT and
water quality trading. The students running the ecological simulations will have to insert the societal model into
the ecosystem. Students will be assessing the environmental impact of the best solution achieved in the
abstract. Other students will move onto water quality trading. Students in this stream will learn how to use
GAMBIT to model the trading of pollutant credits. Students will be able to collect the data for the inputs from a
local pilot or will be able to propose other areas of the world (provided the data are available). It is anticipated
that students in this stream will spend some time determining how to represent the uncertainty in the data for
different sectors.
In addition to the modeling, students will also write a literature/book review on a relevant topic. The purpose of
the literature review is to provide an assessment of previous work in a relevant area and to identify gaps in this
research. The book review is an assessment of a text that is relevant to the course and accessible with the
student’s background. In addition to this tasks, the students will complete a short written assignment in
October, a journal and a poster and final report on their work. The shorter assignment will be a project proposal
or a quick-start guide to COBWEB. The journal will be used to record the results of experiments as well as any of
the student’s thoughts about the results. In the Winter Semester, the students will focus on the actual
simulation. Once a week, each student will use the lab period to test out a range of new ideas. The most
promising will form the basis for work between the lab sessions. The students will prepare a research poster and
a final report on their research.
MARKING SCHEME (assignments with weight and due date):
2-page project proposal/or quick-start guide to COBWEB
Journal
Literature/Book Review
Poster
Final Report
Oct. 30, 2015 10%
Apr. 08, 2016 20%
Dec. 04, 2015 20%
Mar. 03, 2016 10%
Apr. 04, 2016 40%
RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY PROGRAM
299Y PROJECT DESCRIPTION #2 - 2015-2016
Name and Title:
Department:
Phone Number:
Dr. Brad Bass, Adjunct Professor
School of the Environment
416-739-4588
Email: [email protected]
TITLE OF RESEARCH PROJECT: Best Management Practices for Urban Areas to Manage Phosphorus: Existing
Technologies and New Innovations
NUMBER OF STUDENT PLACES AVAILABLE: 6
OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY: Algal blooms, triggered by excess nutrient loadings, in the Great Lakes are a
high priority issue due to the importance of this base to Canadians and Americans. The mitigation in nutrient
loading is a priority for Canada, the US and the International Joint Commission. In freshwater, phosphorus is the
most limiting nutrient supporting primary production and therefore, nutrient strategies aiming to reduce
loadings are most often related to phosphorus reduction (as total phosphorus). Among the Great Lakes, Lake
Erie is considered as to be the most impacted by high nutrient loadings. The poor ecological conditions of the
lake are the combined results of a shallow depth and a highly developed watershed. In 2011, the largest blooms
of blue green algae (BGA) ever observed were recorded, but there have been large blooms in other years as
well. Algal blooms in Lake Erie have wide implications, including ecological impacts as well as social and
economic impacts. BGA are associated with reduced transfer of energy to higher trophic levels of the food webs
and have the potential to produce toxins causing further alteration of the biota, health problems, recreation and
drinking water. In addition to BGA issues, other macroalgae blooms (Cladophora) are responsible for reducing
biodiversity, fouling beaches and clogging intake pipes in the nearshore regions of Lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron
causing additional impairments of the ecosystem structure and functions.
In order to reduce and manage phosphorus loading in surface waters, several Best Management Practices
(BMPs) have been identified and applied to address the diverse sources of nutrients. Overall, the diversity of
nutrient sources equals that of BMPs needed to be implemented to mitigate inputs. Due to the large selection of
BMPs, an assessment of their effectiveness across large spatial scales and urban flow conditions is needed to
select amongst the various alternative BMPs. The goal of this study is to provide an assessment of the
technology currently used to mitigate urban sources of nutrients.
DESCRIPTION OF STUDENT PARTICIPATION:
Students in this ROP will be reviewing, primarily technical information, on new innovations for reducing
phosphorus loadings. Students will be provided with existing reviews, guidelines for evaluation and potential
areas of innovation. The focus is on technology, but this covers a wide range of options, and will include green
infrastructure (i.e. green roofs, green walls, bioswales).
Although focus is on technology, students will be free to suggest non-technological approaches to reducing
nutrient loads. These may include innovative regulatory measures, economic measures or programs. Students
may also have the opportunity to evaluate potential performance under different climate change scenarios
using existing scenario websites to construct plausible future climate scenarios and an evaluation template to
guide the evaluation of technical performance under warmer temperatures and changes to the precipitation
regime. Qualified students may have the opportunity to participate in ongoing research efforts to evaluate new
technologies.
Each student will be assigned a broad area at first, but this will be narrowed to allow the student to keep on top
of the research in one or two areas of innovation. Examples of innovation include the use of slag, biochar, new
filter technology, mycelium, baffles within structures, floating islands and nutrient mining. Most of the work will
be based on peer-reviewed evaluations, but where these are not available, students will be able to use
unpublished reports and interviews. In order to accommodate a range of assessments, with different levels of
peer review, students will be instructed in NUSAP, a methodology for describing uncertainty and the quality of
the review.
Students will produce an initial proposal as to their preferred direction of research. It is expected that students
will produce an annotated bibliography in the fall. In the second semester, students will continue adding to the
bibliography, but will also produce a written report. The report will focus on a narrow range of approaches and
and may be shorter than a typical assignment of this nature, but it will be supplemented with a visual
presentation (i.e. PowerPoint, Prezi, or HTML) and a poster. As time and funding* permit, trips will be arranged
to see some examples of different approaches to managing nutrients from wastewater and storm water.
An important part of the ROP is an opportunity to meet with a faculty supervisor and other students in the ROP.
This ROP will require weekly meetings to discuss new ideas and problems as well as to provide instruction on
evaluation and the NUSAP methodology. The journals are an important component of these meetings, and each
student will be asked to keep an updated journal of findings, ideas and problems. These journals will be brought
to each meeting.
This is an ideal ROP for students pursuing degrees in chemistry, physics, environmental science, biology, the
visual arts and geography. It will provide a good background for careers in ecological engineering and other
careers related to water quality. However, students in other disciplines are encourage to apply if they have an
interest in technology, water quality or other non-technological approaches that might be used in managing
nutrient loads.
MARKING SCHEME (assignments with weight and due date):
2-page project proposal/or quick-start guide to COBWEB
Journal
Annotated Bibliography
Poster
Final Report & Presentation
Oct. 30, 2015 10%
Apr. 08, 2016 20%
Dec. 04, 2015 20%
Mar. 03, 2016 10%
Apr. 04, 2016 40%