Strachan and Li (2021) survey of energy system modeling in the United Kingdom

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Robbie Morrison

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May 26, 2021, 10:32:46 AM5/26/21
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Hi all

A new survey on energy system modeling in the United Kingdom:

The DOI is currently broken, perhaps awaiting registration? The document itself is under full copyright.

The United Kingdom often use quite soft definitions such as "open access" models and "presumed open" data.   My FOSS lawyer friends would advise me to only use software with a legitimate software license and only redistribute data, whether modified or not, with a legitimate data‑capable license.   I keep a reasonable eye out for open energy system models and I have none logged for the United Kingdom (DESSTinEE from ICL uses a non‑software open license and thereby sits in a gray zone).  Perhaps others on this list can post examples that they are aware of?  That would be interesting.  I am not trying to be unkind, but science does imply third party reproducibility and that in turn does imply access to the required artifacts under suitable open licensing.

with best wishes, Robbie

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Robbie Morrison
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Robbie Morrison

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Jan 27, 2022, 7:00:20 AM1/27/22
to openmod-i...@googlegroups.com, Jessica Bays (UKERC)

Hello all  (cc: Jessica Bays, UKERC, FYI)

To follow up, researchers at the UK Energy Research Centre based in London spent 2021 surveying energy system modeling in the United Kingdom and duly issued a set of four reports. As follows (note also that the DOIs have not been particularly reliable for me):

I pulled out some themes that might be of interest for this community:

  • open source models account for about 16% of the energy models covered in the survey (briefing 3, page 16, although the projects themselves are not listed)

  • spreadsheet models (termed "Excel models") are clearly the most common platform (no aggregate stats cited but see briefing 3, figures 15 and 18)

  • although a significant number (circa 30%) of modeling teams report the use and implied offer of "open data", there is no treatment of the concept in the text (briefing 3, figure 15) — and I would take a fair guess that self‑reported data openness will fall well short of robust usage of that terminology elsewhere — for instance, the UK Open Knowledge Foundation, the UK Icebreaker One organization, or say recital 16 in the European Union 2019/1024 open data directive (page 58) (in part): "Open data as a concept is generally understood to denote data in an open format that can be freely used, re-used and shared by anyone for any purpose."

Within the post‑Brexit United Kingdom currently, as with the European Union, numerical information under statutory reporting is not expressly legally unencumbered.  So adding a CC‑BY‑4.0, CC0‑1.0, or an inbound compatible license to such information would, in general, be technically unlawful. And I believe data openness is an issue that the UKERC needs to dig in to.  Perhaps for this year?

In summary, nice to see this type of survey in the hope that better research allocation decisions might also result.  And better public policy outcomes too in due course.

with best wishes, Robbie

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