| Abstract |
More and more people move to cities as cities develop. The population growth stimulates economic development of a city, which in turn attracts more immigrants and investors and creates a lot of employment opportunities. However, the rapid economic growth also leads to environmental issues.
This study simulates and investigates land-use change and carbon dioxide emissions in Kaohsiung City through system dynamics. Kaohsiung is a center of traditional industries where its residents mainly engage in the secondary and tertiary sectors. The stable economic growth has increased energy consumption and resulted in enormous carbon dioxide emissions. The industrial waste gases constitute 80% of the total emissions in Kaohsiung City. The situation is worsened due to the fact that local industries require high levels of energy consumption. As a result, Kaohsiung City tops the list of cities and counties with most carbon dioxide emissions in Taiwan.
With solving the problem of carbon dioxide emissions as the goal, a systems thinking model was used in this study to divide population, industry, housing, land, and carbon dioxide into different subsystems and consequently produce a causal diagram for the development of Kaohsiung City. Feedback loops were then designed based on the causal relationships, followed by the modeling and stimulation of current status using STELLA, a type of system dynamics software. Moreover, the emission of carbon dioxide was controlled by land-use planning, which is a less common method. These methods were expected to achieve the short-term goal of reduced carbon dioxide emissions set by Kaohsiung City.
In this study, control and development strategies were also formulated for industrial, commercial, and residential sectors to find the optimal combination of development and control processes across the sectors for efficient reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Green space planning and energy structure adjustment were also included as different strategies to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. |
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