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Project Background and Vision
This project aims to integrate two widely used open-source policy modelling frameworks —CLEWS and OG-Core— into a unified, end-to-end decision-support tool for sustainable development planning. By linking sectoral resource systems (climate, land, energy, and water) with a dynamic macroeconomic model, the project will enable policymakers to assess the economy-wide impacts of climate and development policies in a transparent, reproducible, and user-friendly way. These frameworks have been successfully implemented in over 20 countries in a wide range of issues, from informing the development of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement and preventing maladaptation to climate impacts, to assessing options to help lower-income households, or informing on the viability of social protection and pension systems — thus benefitting hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
The Economic Analysis and Policy Division (EAPD) of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) oversees the development and country-level implementation of these open-source modelling tools. For over a decade, these models have supported developing countries facing challenges in achieving sustainable development, particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Land-Locked Countries, and Least Developed Countries. Because they are open source, assumptions are visible and results are reproducible, supporting informed policy discussion. They can be run and adapted at low cost, and they can be calibrated to the data a country actually has, making rigorous analyses feasible in developing and low-income settings where proprietary tools are often out of reach.
The CLEWS (Climate, Land, Energy, Water Systems) framework, built on the OSeMOSYS - Open Source Energy Modelling System, maps the interactions, synergies, and trade-offs among land use, the energy sector, and water systems under climate change scenarios. It allows users to check the actual, physical viability of their plans, from analyzing whether there will have enough land and water to implement a biofuel policy for energy independence, to studying the impacts of carbon taxes on a green energy transition.
The country-adapted OG-CORE is an overlapping-generations (OG) macroeconomic model that enables dynamic general equilibrium analysis of fiscal, demographic, and economic policies over the long term. OG-Core turns government choices into testable scenarios and shows how they shape growth, jobs, and inequality over time and across generations. It can stress-test a range of major reforms, from taxing and spending choices to health or education policies, and technology shifts such as the effects of AI on productivity.
The OG–CLEWS framework expands both models into a single integrated assessment tool by linking their data structures, execution workflows, and analytical outputs. While both models are mature and widely used, they currently operate as separate tools. This project will create a standardized, automated interface between them and a shared execution and visualization layer, enabling integrated analyses that are not currently possible with existing tools. It will provide policymakers with an easy-to-use, accessible tool to check their plans and strategies and back them with an evidence-based, transparent assessment tool. They will gain a more holistic view of their policies, encompassing natural resources management, the energy sector, and their macroeconomic and fiscal implications, in a novel approach that is not currently available to them.
The enhancements developed through this project will be implemented in more than 10 target countries under an ongoing USD 2 million Peace and Development Trust Fund programme, through the through the United Nations Regular Programme for Technical Cooperation, as well as through the Development Account 19th Tranche, ensuring that the results of this work will have real-world impact beyond the GSoC through 2030, helping more countries worldwide achieve their Sustainable Development Goals.
MUIOGO is a downstream project that currently starts from a MUIO baseline.
Implementation for this project (issues, branches, and pull requests) is managed in:
Upstream collaboration with OSeMOSYS/MUIO is welcome, but delivery in
MUIOGO cannot depend on upstream timelines or releases.
By the end of the GSoC period, contributors will deliver a maintainable,
platform-independent application in MUIOGO that supports:
- standalone execution of CLEWS/OSeMOSYS,
- standalone execution of OG-Core,
- integrated OG–CLEWS workflows.
MUIOGO currently starts from a direct-copy baseline of MUIO, but all project
delivery and review happen in this repository.
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Cross-platform MUIOGO baseline: Contributors will refactor and package the current baseline so it runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux while preserving existing core functionality.
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OG-Core module in MUIOGO: Contributors will implement OG-Core support in the MUIOGO workflow, including scenario/data management, run controls, logs, and results handling.
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OG–CLEWS coupled module in MUIOGO: Contributors will implement one-way coupled workflows (CLEWS to OG and OG to CLEWS), including data exchange steps, intermediate artifacts, and validation checks.
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OG–CLEWS converging workflow in MUIOGO: Contributors will extend coupled execution to iterative runs until convergence criteria are met, with clear run controls and user-facing outputs.