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Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Simulation for Environmental Policy Synthesis

Rudd-Jones, J; Musolesi, M; Pérez-Ortiz, M; (2025) Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Simulation for Environmental Policy Synthesis. In: AAMAS '25: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. (pp. pp. 2890-2895). ACM (Association for Computing Machinery): Detroit, MI, USA. Green open access

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Abstract

Climate policy development faces significant challenges due to deep uncertainty, complex system dynamics, and competing stakeholder interests. Climate simulation methods, such as Earth System Models, have become valuable tools for policy exploration. However, their typical use is for evaluating potential polices, rather than directly synthesizing them. The problem can be inverted to optimize for policy pathways, but the traditional optimization approaches often struggle with non-linear dynamics, heterogeneous agents, and comprehensive uncertainty quantification. We propose a framework for augmenting climate simulations with Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) to address these limitations. We identify key challenges at the interface between climate simulations and the application of MARL in the context of policy synthesis, including reward definition, scalability with increasing agents and state spaces, uncertainty propagation across linked systems, and solution validation. Additionally, we discuss challenges in making MARL-derived solutions interpretable and useful for policy-makers. Our framework provides a foundation for more sophisticated climate policy exploration while acknowledging important limitations and areas for future research.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Simulation for Environmental Policy Synthesis
Event: 24th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS '25)
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.5555/3709347.3744041
Publisher version: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3709347.3744041
Language: English
Additional information: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10211655
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