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Developing a WiNDC Web Application to solve CGE Models

Mitch Phillipson October 17, 2025

julia Visualization

Since I stated at WiNDC I have had the vision of developing a web application to allow users to run CGE models built with WiNDC without needing to install any software locally. The past week I have made significant progress towards this goal and have a working prototype.

If you want to try it out yourself, you need to clone the repository and run it locally. The intention is to deploy this application on a server so that anyone can access it via a web browser, but this requires coordination with UW IT services. I hope to have this set up next week. If you get stuck or have questions, feel free to reach out to me.

What is currently implemented?

The prototype uses WiNDC National 2023 data and corresponding model. The parameters tab allows users to modify the three available model parameters. The counterfactual column is editable and allows any values to be entered. Clicking the Run Simulation button will adjust the model parameters, solve the model, and display the results in the results tab.

Being a prototype, there are a lot of limitations. For example, if a model may not solve with the given parameters, there is no error handling implemented yet. If you experience any issues, raise an issue on GitHub.

What are the next steps?

  1. Error handling: Implement error handling to provide feedback when the model fails to solve.
  2. Update the model description.
  3. Add more visualization options for the results, such as prices.
  4. Add formatting to make the application more appealing.
  5. Add the ability to download the results in various file formats.
  6. Let users download/upload parameter values as CSV or Excel files.

I see this as the next step for WiNDC. Not everybody knows how to do everything, end users shouldn’t need to know how to code and getting software approved may be a barrier in some organizations. A web application would allow anyone to run CGE models built with WiNDC with just a web browser. This should open WiNDC and CGE analysis to a much wider audience.