Abstract for: Development of Hybrid Smart Energy Distribution Decision Support Model: Case of Zimbabwe

By the year 2018, 4.2 billion people lived in cities approximating 55 % of the world’s population. In relation to these statistics, the United Nations in 2016 estimated a rise to 5.5 billion by 2050. This rise results in resources strain such as electricity and declines the ability to meet urban energy demands, hence prompting the need for informed decision-making policies to sustain cities’ liveability. An example is Zimbabwe, with visible trends of decline in the nation’s ability to supply adequate electricity for the growing demand. As means of solving these urbanization problems, this research aims at developing a hybrid energy decision-making model to aid in the implementation of smart cities and sustain cities in wake of rising populations. An integration of System Dynamics-Agent-based modelling was used for the development of the hybrid model. The smart energy hybrid model distribution system has both advantages of ABM and SD through means of incorporating detail and individual behaviours, functions and rules such investors, cities population and the electricity demand providing the systematic causal relationships to study and monitor the system holistically respectively. Different scenarios were simulated, the resultant model produced viable results of electricity availability, demand, and profitability of the system.