Achieving Sustainable Development in Southern California: Collaborative Learning Through System Dynamics Modeling

Southern California's gateway to international commerce is through major ports in the San Pedro Bay. The University of Southern California is working with local business and other port stakeholders to enable collaborative learning about sustainable business practices. We are using system dynamics-based models for participants to locate leverage points that yield the highest CO2 footprint reduction for the lowest cost for the shipping of goods from China through one of the ports. As goods movement is a process in which numerous business entities connect, it also offers an opportunity for a collaborative learning approach. We model key leverage points in the supply chain to explore the affects of potential business decisions on the CO2 footprint of shipping containers. These include options for global route choices and clean technologies for ships, rails and trucks. We are expanding the models for refined route options, adding cost functions, and composite clean technology choices across the transport modalities.