2.T1 Training Materials: Video "Introduction to FABLE Calculator" (original) (raw)

Video: "Introduction to FABLE Calculator"

Hello! Thanks for your interest in the FABLE Calculator. At the end of each of the sub-sections of this Wiki, you will find a video summarizing the most important material reviewed in the Documentation, as well as detailing a bit more on how the information provided in the Documentation actually looks in the calculator. Feel free to send us any feedback on how to improve these videos, and on which topics should also be included, to the email address: info.fable@unsdsn.org.

In the following link you may find the video on "Introduction to FABLE Calculator":

Link to Video

The text of the video is below:

Welcome to this introduction video on the FABLE Calculator. Our objective for this video is to help you learn why we have created the FABLE Calculator, how it is constructed, and to begin to understand its overall structure.

The FABLE calculator is an accounting tool that focuses on the agricultural sector. It shows the evolution of multiple objectives related to the food and land-use systems over 2000 to 2050 and how alternative assumptions on key parameters can increase or decrease the likelihood to meet sustainability objectives.

The FABLE Calculator has been developed for the FABLE initiative under the Food and Land Use Coalition, to better understand how countries could transition towards more sustainable systems. That is, how countries can meet the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris agreement, and other national objectives.

The FABLE Consortium currently comprises research teams from twenty countries, who did not always have access to integrated models that could represent the evolution of land-use and food systems at the national level. We have developed the FABLE calculator to have a model that could be easily adapted to different countries and transferred even to non-modelers.

The FABLE Calculator is a model that follows various steps of calculations where, with the exception of the first step, all other steps are dependent on one or several variables, which are computed in the previous steps. This is represented by the arrows in this figure.

The first step is the computation of human demand for agricultural products – 76 products in total. Computed demand and assumptions on trade are used to compute the livestock production and the crop production. We calculate livestock production first, because we also need to estimate the demand for animal feed to compute the total crop production. Then, estimated production is used to compute cropland and pasture area. If there is not enough land available for the required agricultural land expansion, production and consumption are adjusted.

Utilizing Excel, we ensure that the calculator runs on most computers. Also, it does not require advanced programming skills to understand and modify the formulas.

You can download here the open Calculator for the region called Rest of Asia and Pacific. We will use it as an example through these tutorials.

You can find on the Welcome page, the countries that are included in this region, the link to the documentation, the description of the structure of the workbook that should help you to navigate through it, and the sharing conditions.

The FABLE Calculator comprises four main types of worksheets: in light red are the ones related to scenarios, in yellow, the ones related to the visualization of the main results indicators and objectives, in green the ones related to the computation, and in grey the ones that contain the input data.

There are two other important worksheets. The Change Log worksheet allows you to document all the changes you make to the Calculator and track differences across versions.

The Scenathon worksheet is a table with all the key results and parameters of the model that you will need to analyze and explain your results. That will also allow you to compare your results with the other users of the FABLE calculator.

Text in slide:

• Table SELECTED_SCENARIOS: Summary of all scenarios that are selected by the user

• Table REPORTING_AGGREGATE: Main results of the calculations, per year

• Table REPORTING_BYPRODUCT: Main results of the calculations, per year and per product

The computation worksheets follow the order of the calculations shown in the previous slide. For example, in step 1, the model calculates human demand, and this is done in the green calculation worksheet labeled with the number 1, using data from the respective grey worksheet labeled with the number 1.

Have a look at the scenarios selection worksheet!

Each table corresponds to one parameter of the model. For instance, population, diets, productivity, trade, or constraints on agricultural land expansion.

You can test the impact of alternative values of this parameter on your objectives by deleting the existing cross and entering the cross in a new row.

For instance, let’s select a higher population growth scenario: from SSP1 to UN-high, and now look at the impacts on the results on the yellow worksheets.

Does higher population growth have the impacts you expected on the system? Which other scenarios could mitigate these impacts? This will be the focus of our next video.

----------------------------------- Content ------------------------------------

0:00 - Welcome

0:27 - What is the FABLE Calculator?

0:53 - FOLU critical transitions

1:14 - What is the FABLE Consortium?

1:40 - Sequence of calculations steps

1:57 - What happens in each step of the FABLE Calculator?

2:44 - The FABLE Calculator as an accessible, open-source model

3:05 - Sheet structure of the calculator: Welcome page

3:22 - Sheet structure of the calculator: Color codes

3:48 - Sheet structure of the calculator: Change Log

3:57 - Sheet structure of the calculator: Scenathon worksheet