Dynamic marginal cost curves to support water resources management
Journal article, 2024

Marginal cost curves (MCCs) are popular decision-support tools for assessing and ranking the cost-effectiveness of different options in environmental policy and management. However, conventional MCC approaches have been criticized for lack of transparency and disregard for complexity; not accounting for interaction effects between measures; ignoring ancillary benefits and costs; and not considering intertemporal dynamics. In this paper, we present an approach to address these challenges using a system dynamics (SD)-based model for producing dynamic MCCs. We describe the approach by applying it to evaluate efforts to address water scarcity in a hypothetical, but representative, Swedish city. Our results show that the approach effectively addresses all four documented limitations of conventional MCC methods. They also show that combining MCCs with behavior-over-time graphs and causal-loop diagrams can lead to new policy insights and support a more inclusive decision-making process.

Water

System dynamics

Marginal cost curve

Simulation

Cost-effectiveness

Author

Andreas Nicolaidis Lindqvist

Stockholm Resilience Centre

RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

Shane Carnohan

RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Rickard Fornell

RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Linda Tufvesson

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

Thomas Prade

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)

Andreas Lindhe

Geology and Geotechnics

Karin Sjöstrand

RISE Research Institutes of Sweden

Journal of Environmental Management

0301-4797 (ISSN) 1095-8630 (eISSN)

Vol. 368 122004

Subject Categories

Water Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122004

PubMed

39146652

More information

Latest update

8/21/2024