When communities face their most pressing challenges—managing disaster risk, adapting to climate change, navigating energy transitions—solutions rarely emerge from the top down. These problems are inherently messy: stakeholders clash over competing values, frame reality differently, and bring distinct expertise to the table. Yet this complexity, when engaged thoughtfully, becomes a source of strength.

Participatory modeling channels this strength by embedding stakeholders in the construction of formal problem representations. This transforms modeling from a unidirectional knowledge transfer into a process of collaborative knowledge co-production, enabling diverse perspectives to strengthen systems understanding and build collective agency.

Agent-based modeling (ABM) is particularly well-suited to this purpose. Its capacity to represent heterogeneous actors, capture emergent dynamics, and make assumptions explicit positions it as a powerful boundary object across disciplines and communities.