An agent based model of environmental awareness and limited resource consumption

An Agent Based Model is proposed to study the individual and collective behavioral changes toward environmental sustainability using ICT-based services. Using ABMs to simulate how environmental awareness spreads is an interdisciplinary issue that involves ICT and energy and environment studies, as well as social and behavioral sciences. Our demonstration will show how the proposed ABM can describe the impact of such awareness on consumption of a limited or critical resource, like energy or water. We will show that there are scenarios that lead to overuse of the resource and scenarios in which this does not happen because sustainable behavior emerges. The key discriminating factor is the collective situational awareness of environmental effects of actions. Such awareness makes "green behavior" easier and can counter possible rebound effects. The demonstration will focus on the role played by smart metering functions. © 2013 Authors.