Towards a ‘Global Systems Science ’

1. Ralph Dum Digital Science Directorate General CONNECT European Commission Towards a ‘Global Systems Science’ Implementing evidence-based policies in a networked global world The twofold role of ICT in responses to global challenges: Providing evidence Driving action and change

2. Can ICT help society face global challenges? GLOBAL = borderless, worldwide and cutting across different policy sectors Examples: financial crisis, climate change impact, food security, pandemics .... Consequences for policy AND science: -Policy decisions in different sectors are no longer disconnected: no more silos  Unintended consequences of actions (why do bio-ful subsidies cause foot riots?) -In interconnected systems rare events escalate: ‘I am not worried about the mean. It’s the tail!’ (Lord Stern) • The role of S&T can no longer be restricted to provide knowledge and to create new technologies, increasingly it has to play a role in providing insights in the functioning our society and its link to environment. • Twofold role of ICT • Policy informatics: system models and data in support of policies • Societal informatics: from models and data to action

3. There are many webs that humanity has spunIT has reshaped all of them and has weaved ‘the Web’ IT helped humanity spin global ‘webs’ (trade, finance, terrorism) They are all interconnected! Stefano Battiston, networks of corporate control Facebook Threat: Governing such global ‘hyper-connected’ networks becomes a challenge Opportunity: Can we profit from the collective power of such networks?

4. Past: Web as Alexandrian Library -‘The Web, the next Revolution after Gutenberg‘ (The Economist) - Wikipedia: collective Encyclopedia • Present: Web as Agora • - Blogs/twitter: Hyde park online • - Collective/Participatory approaches to federate human intelligence;crowdsourcing • 'Web of open data' Future(s): Web as social lab - Web-based social experiments - Social data treasures online -‘Twitterology’: analysis of public sentiment Opportunities for the social sciences Future(s): Web as Polis -Real-time feedback on policies -'Twitterrevolutions -Republique 2.0 (Michel Rocard) -Can ‘the Web’ help drive political agendas? Opportunities for societal change The ‘Web’ - a social space:A future driver of social change and policy actionNew opportunities for the social sciences and for policies

5. Can ICT help society to face global challenges? Policy informatics “A data state of mind: data can change mindsets “(Hans Roslin) • Policy informatics in support of evidence-based policies • Better understand emerging system-wide risks from global challenges and to better anticipate consequences of policy actions in interconnected systems • -Advanced simulation of interconnected socio-economic-ecological systems • -System Science/Network science to better understand highly connected systems • -'Big Data' to help ground policies in the abundance of social, economic, and ecological data available.

6. Data on networks as policy input Economic Complexity Measures Network of trade Economic complexity measures (German product space) : Cesar Hidalgo www.chidalgo.com/papers.html The Observatory of Economic Complexity is a an open source project that allows users to quickly compose a visual narrative about countries and the products they exchange.

7. Data on networks as policy input Pandemics modelling

8. Example: Humans in the loop: A vicious circle of positive feedback loops D = V * Δ C in climate change The unbearable linearity of thinking Source: Tyndall centre Greenhouse gases  Warming  Change in economic behaviour  GHG …

9. Example: Dynamics and Non-linearity in economics The unbearable linearity of thinking: General equilibrium economics Equilibria are neither unique nor easy to reach dynamically (in contrast to what academics in economics think)

10. Does Market wisdom excel? Network effects in finance: cascading failures System effects dominate|: Assess Systemic risk due to feedback loops in network Use of specific quantitative measures from network theory (beyond standard equilibrium economics) Role of agency: Feedback loops between models on derivative products and behavior of agents EC projects in GSS: NESS, FOC,CRISIS Opportunity for data driven approaches: After financial crisis banks must/want release more information on their activities. Scientists are using now these data to build better system-wide financial models

11. Measures of centrality - importance as DebtRank: Are banks too big to fail?

12. Evidence-based policies? What evidence? So what? ICT as a means to engage society in behavioral changes ‘Why don’t we do what we know we should be doing?’ (Joseph Tainter in ‘Why do complex societies fail?’ ) -The problem of trust (in experts, models, authorities): ICT to engage societal stakeholders in the process of finding and evaluating evidence -Clash of values with scientific evidence: Evidence must be on both, scientific facts and priorities/values in society. -The problem of uncertainty and of timescales: Decisions have to be taken NOW even in case of uncertain input. 'Policy is not Nescafé' ( Hubert Vedrine) Better understanding of the underlying societal dynamics -see tragedy of the commons (Elinor Ostrom)

13. Can ICT help society to face global challenges? Societal informatics  “Revolutions do not happen when a society adopts new tools but only when it adopts novel behaviors. For IT most of that change is still in the future“(Clay Shirky) . Societal informatics in support of change - From models to action GSS must pay special attention to its interface with policy and societal stakeholders The social life of information: ICT facilitating societal processes -ICT to encourage participation of stakeholders in acquiring/analysing evidence -ICT to trigger societal change -ICT to visualise data and to better convey concepts and model results ICT and the social sciences: a data driven experimental social science

14. Can ICT trigger a class of behaviours in ‘social space’? From Ambient Intelligence in urban spaces to ambient intelligence in social space Hundertwasser (1952) ‘Transautomation The ‘ambiance’ is the coherent collection of signs that trigger the enacting of a class of behaviors. (Jean Baudrillard, Le système des objets)‏

15. Harnessing the power of collective Intelligence Example: Communities collectively become ‘human’ sensors GPS helps Pygmies defend forest J. Lewis (UCL) Villagers carry a GPS to record location of their hunting grounds, sacred trees and important rivers to fight illegal logging Symbols are used instead of alphabet

16. EC funded project: Everyaware Collective gathering of data: Increasing trust in data and enhancing awareness Use of mobile phone data linked into a social network--> collective data gathering and collective awareness From objective monitoring - temperature, noise, air quality... to subjective monitoring - opinions, personal experiences ... Impact on individual and collective behavior “Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand.C Street-level London air pollution warnings via mobile phones: Nitrogen dioxide concentrations

17. Harnessing the power of collective Intelligence Example: Civic media’ ICT allows citizens to map out their ‘environments’ Other examples: Web user activity reflects or anticipate market dynamics (EC project FOC) Google used in prediction of spread of pandemics

18. Summary: Towards a ‘Global Systems Science’- GSS Providing evidence Driving action and change Goal: Based on simulation of and Big Data on highly connected systems, to stimulate societal and policy action in response to global challenges like climate change, financial crisis. Two pillars for research and practice of GSS: (i) Policy informatics in support of evidence-based policies in highly connected systems: Simulation of highly interconnected systems and Big Data for social use to help ground policies in the abundance of social, economic, and ecological data. Tools to convey the results of models and to present data: narratives, games , data visualization (ii) Societal informatics in support of policy action and societal change - From models to action: Social media and participatory ICT tools encourage participation of stakeholders in acquiring scientific evidence and trigger trust and engagement of society to scientific evidence in given policy domains. Tools for collective data gathering, Prediction (anticipation) via social network analysis Focus on selected policy areas: dynamics of financial markets, urban systems dynamics, climate change impact.

19. Towards a ‘Global Systems Science’ Steps towards a research agenda and towards policy input • A new unit in DG CONNECT on digital sciences with an emphasis on global systems science in strong collaboration with the EC policy directorates, parliament, and civic society. • Call on policy modelling: WP2013 Objective 5.4 “ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling” • Consultations with policy directorates in EC and international bodies (OECD, IMF...) • Series of workshops to elaborate on input to selected policy areas • -After the financial crisis: harnessing the global economic network • -Urbanism: cities as global systems • -Climate change impact: global responses • Series of workshops to develop an ICT research agenda in relevant ICT tools: • Big Data • Modelling and HPC • Collaborative tools (crowdsourcing) • Conveying model results via narratives, games • Link to art as a conveyor of messages

20. Objective 5.4: ICT for Governance and Policy Excerpts of WP text pertinent for GSS: Develop effective policy tools for understanding complex environment, stimulating sustainable economic growth, addressing financial crisis, active involvement of citizens, in particular younger generation in decision making Behavioural/societal aspects taken into account in policy design, tools to enhance trust by society, involve citizens and young people's involvement in decision-making processes Enablers: Possible areas: -System Models addressing  decisions  in a global networked context. To better understand interdependencies between economic, social, and ecological systems in order to allow coherent decisions across different domains. -ICT tools and online social media for collaborative governance and policy modeling show great opportunities for empowerment of citizens and increased transparency in decision-making -To improve the interface/link between modellers and societal stakeholders:ICTtools that allow engagement of stakeholders in the process of gathering data and analysing impact of models on policy decisions

21. Contribute to the elaboration of a research agenda by joining the GSDP,NESS and INSISTE workshops andconsultation!Funded Networks to elaborate a research agenda in GSS- GSDP Global Systems Dynamics and Policies: www.GSDP.eu- NESS Non-Equilibrium Social Sciences: http://nessnetwork.eu/index.php/Main_Page- INSITE http://insite.ecltech.org/index.php/Main_PageThank you The views expressed in this presentation are the author’s, not the European Commission’s