To develop and implement appropriate regional strategies, we need to understand the potential impacts of various policy interventions, to answer such questions as:
- What’s the impact on employment and population trends of major investments, such as the expansion of Birmingham New Street?
- What are the implications for local employment of specific property developments? Will environmental quality be adversely affected by new developments?
- How might the structure of employment change, and what are the implications for the demand on local services?
- For a given level of employment, what are the housing requirements? How might new developments impact on CO2 emissions?
The Integrated Policy Model, which is currently being developed, is a major advance in policy decision support systems. It can address critical issues of policy in an open and transparent manner, securing ownership from key partners of both the evidence and the outcomes.
What will the model provide?
The model represents an important step forward in the capacity for regional policy analysis. It will provide:
- An accessible, interactive tool for policy makers and analysts.
- A unified framework for exploring the implications of key regional strategies.
- A scenario testing function that will help greater understanding of direct and indirect impacts that emerge over time.
- A mapping tool that presents a unified framework for local authority, sub regional and regional levels.
The model explicitly links economic activity, population changes, housing, travel costs between areas, access to services, and environmental impacts.
Who could use the model?
The model could be used by:
- Regional organisations such as Advantage West Midlands, West Midlands Regional Assembly, West Midlands Regional Observatory and Government Office West Midlands
- Local Authorities
- Universities
- Private sector companies, to assess implications of major investment projects
- Property developers
What is the model?
The model is an interactive tool which allows policy makers and analysts to explore in detail the potential impacts of specific policy interventions. Before committing millions of pounds of investment the potential impacts in different local areas can be simulated within the realistic regional environment of the model.
The model uses sophisticated mathematical techniques that have been developed over 30 years. Combining these techniques with the recent advances in mapping software enables the model to present results in the form of animated maps, supported by traditional charts and tables.
The new approach reflects the growing importance and influence of regional and local policy. Despite clear differences between and within regions, existing economic models have been derived from the more established national models and their structures are very similar to those of their national counterparts.
Models have also tended to be developed for individual themes; population models, transport models, land use models and economic models. Each model is used in isolation, often for individual problems and relying on rigid assumptions about the impact on and influence of the other themes. But the real world is not like that. How can employment land be considered separate from transport, economic change, housing needs or population patterns?
How does our model improve on existing models?
Current economic models were originally developed to look at national problems. They are based on a statistical technique widely used in economics to measure the relationship between economic factors. This relies very much on the past trends being a reliable and consistent indicator of the future. But public interventions are intended to correct market failures; that is to change the course of long standing trends.
So, an effective model must be able to allow changes to the underlying relationships. The sophisticated mathematical techniques that will be used have been developed to deal explicitly with these changes.
Existing models do not explicitly include the geography of economic and social activity. Spatial relationships arising from residence and employment locations impact through commuting patterns. These feed directly into environmental impacts such as air emissions, from transport, the location of essential services and the demand for new homes and employment centres.
Furthermore, there is an increasing call for the alignment of regional strategies. The traditional approach of modelling individual issues, isolated from the links with other issues, does not allow for alignment.