Dealing with Dynamics, Future Uncertainty and Distributed Decision Making in Industrial and Urban Ecosystems

When?

Wednesday 13 October 2010, 12:30

Where?

45A AZ 04

Open to:

Staff, Students, Public

Speaker:

Jim Petrie, University of Sydney and University of Cape Town

Attention is paid to specific challenges for sustainable development beyond the broad aims of achieving economic competitiveness, ensuring environmental stewardship, and promoting equitable social welfare. The focus is on the distributed decision making practices of individual agents within networks of industry, business, government and civil society, which, in various combinations, provide the underlying structure of any industrial or urban ecosystem. Here, we consider the need for design and analysis tools to engage with the dynamics and uncertainty which characterize complex hierarchical socio-technical systems, including the ability to observe and interrogate system behaviour over multiple spatial and temporal scales. 

This capability should embrace the vitality which comes from human judgment in decision making within these systems, and support the transition of such networks to ones which are both resilient and adaptive whilst pursuing sustainability goals. Agent-based models of these ecosystems can be coupled with scenario analysis techniques to engage with future uncertainties. The way in which individual agents internalize “world view” scenarios in their own distributed decision making practices, and the effectiveness of agent interventions to support successful transitions to more sustainable practices, are highlighted. Some examples of the application of these approaches to energy and infrastructure projects are given.