Climate change: Optimization of response strategies

The development of climate change response strategies is expected to remain an important issue in the next few decades. The use of optimization techniques might serve as a helpful guide in this process. Although, in recent years, a number of studies have focused on optimization techniques, the optimization models do not fully employ the dynamics of climatic and economic systems. In this paper a heuristic is introduced that combines an integrated simulation model and an optimization technique (local search). This approach may be considered as a first step towards a more comprehensive and systematic analysis of climate change response strategies in a dynamic setting described by a simulation model. Results of a number of experiments in which the heuristic is applied to the integrated global assessment model TARGETS are discussed.