Simulation in the analysis of sustainable development: Goals, planning, and evaluation

There are various points of view on the meaning of the term "sustainable development," what sustainability is, and how to evaluate it. In this paper we analyze criteria (indicators) of sustainability and three existing complex simulation models used to evaluate the process of sustainable development in the regions of Japan, Germany, and USA. We discuss clarifications of the process to achieve regional sustainability and to evaluate it with a simulation model. In this paper we also propose a problem-based approach to simulation of the sustainable development process at a regional level, which is used to solve existing applied problems and make simulation more useful by reducing complexity of the model.