week 5

ITS 832 CHAPTER 4

Policy Making and Modelling in a Complex World

Information Technology in a Global Economy

INTRODUCTION

• Policy Making and Modelling in a Complex World

• Complexity

• ManagingComplex Systems

• Modelling for Complex Systems

COMPLEXITY

• System composed of multiple interacting elements • Possible behavioral states can combine in ways that are hard to

predict

• Many complex systems in the physical world

• Adaptive capacity of organisms allow for long-term survival in complexsystems

• ComplexAdaptive Systems (CAS)

DOUBLE PENDULUMEXAMPLE

COMMON MISTAKES IN MANAGING COMPLEX SYSTEMS

• Quantification • Policy is biased towards easily quantifiable features

• Mostoften, monetary quantification

• Commonly overlooks important non-quantifiable aspects

• Compartmentalization • Attempts to simplify complex social systems

• Large systems are split into smaller systems

• Likely to miss interactions between smaller systems • Spillover effect

COMPLEXITY IN POLICYMAKING

• Common approaches • Instrumental

• Choosing between a set of possible policies

• Evaluated based on past effectiveness

• Requires • Large enough pool of available strategies

• Effective assessment of effectiveness

• Representational • Series ofmodels

• Each is assessed on its ability to predict observed behavior

INSTRUMENTALAPPROACH

REPRESENTATIONAL APPROACH

AGENT-BASED MODELS

• Represents individuals as separate models

• Agents interact through a network

• Distributed nature allows for realistic interactions

• SIMSOC • Simulated Society

• Modeling projectsrepository

SUMMARY

• Complexsystems aredifficult to model

• Interactions can be unpredictable

• Commonmistakes inmodeling complexsystems • Quantification

• Compartmentalization

• Twocommon approaches to complex system modeling • Instrumental

• Representational

• Agent-based modeling