Last updated:
July 20th, 2007

Summer School 2008

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Summer School on
Space in Unified Models of Economy and Ecology

Venice, July 6th-12th, 2008

Economic and ecological systems evolve in time and space. Interactions take place among units occupying distinct spatial points and geographical patterns of production activities, urban concentrations, or species concentrations occur. The emergence of spatial patterns in economics has received relatively little systematic analysis, with the notable exception of the body of knowledge developed in the context of new economic geography. On the other hand, the concept of diffusion has been used in ecological modeling to explain spatial pattern formation in ecological systems.

The purpose of this summer school is to review and present methods of modeling spatial problems in ecological economics, and to show how these methods can be used to environmental and resource management. In this context the summer schools is expected to cover issues associated with
- the use of diffusion processes to model evolution in time and space
- the implications of "the Turing mechanism" for diffusive instability, and the emergence of steady state spatial patterns.
- the control of diffusion processes in ecological/economic models which evolve in time and space.
- applications of spatial methods to environmental and resource management and regulation problems, where space is important as in cases of patchy environments, species movements, pollution diffusion. These problems could include harvesting of renewable resources, management of pollution which diffuse in space, bioinvasions, elements of spatial econometrics and GIS.

Lecturers:

Anastasios Xepapadeas, University of Crete, Greece (coordinator)
Topic: Optimal management of spatial economic/ecological models

Aart De Zeeuw, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Topic: Dynamic resource models

Carlo Giupponi, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and University of Milan, Italy
Topic: t.b.a.

Simon Levin, Princeton University, USA
Topic: Spatial models in Ecology

Michael Rauscher, Rostock University, Germany
Topic: Location of pollution activities

James Wilen, University of California at Davis, USA
Topic: Spatial models in renewable resource management