Abstract for:Integrating flood safety simulation and policy beliefs

Systems dynamics models are often used to study socio-technical sys- tems and how they are affected by policies. This has mostly resulted in the use of single models and the implementation of a number of policies either individually or through scenarios. This paper proposes an alternative ap- proach where, through a hybrid model, policy emergence can be directly simulated within the socio-technical model using an agent based model. A hybrid model is presented where a strategic flood protection system dy- namics model is coupled to a policy emergence model to demonstrate the maturity and benefits of such an approach. The coupling process which requires the creation of a belief tree for the actors, a set of policy packages, and an overall model architecture is presented in details. Limited results outline the insights that can be obtained through this approach both on the socio-technical and on the policy making side. The paper shows that such an approach is promising and that there is merit in performing a more substantial study.