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PUBLISHED ON: Proceedings of the 26th International System Dynamics Conference (ISDC) YEAR: 2008 ISBN: 978-1-935056-01-0 AUTHOR/s: Armenia, Perugia, Roma REFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: digitPA LINKS: http://www.digitpa.gov.it/ USED TOOL: Powersim DESCRIPTION: This study deals with a System Dynamics analysis of the paper dematerialization problem during the transition to an all-digital society. The efforts are focused on the description of the situation in terms of the relationships between systemic variables that define the underlying structure of the problem. The referring context is the Italian Public Administration. The central spots of the analysis are the diffusion of the "new technology" and the problem of the archives' dimensions, which have been formalized, by means of the creation and the study of a casual loop diagram, into a dynamical hypothesis. The systemic approach that we used through the whole study, allowed us to consider many collateral aspects that are crucial in this issue, and provide a rich analysis that also shows how social and psychological factors may in the end determine policy resistance and great obstacles to organizational change.

PUBLISHED ON: Proceedings of the 22nd International System Dynamics Conference (ISDC) YEAR: 2011ISBN: 978-1-935056-08-9AUTHOR/s: Armenia, Stefano, Yannis Charalabidis, Diego Falsini, Fenareti Lampathaki, David Osimo and Katarzyna SzkutaREFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: Crossroads ProjectLINKS: http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/ DESCRIPTION: The role of Government has evolved over the last thirty years and while its role in service provision has diminished, its regulation activity is growing. The world has become increasingly interconnected, complex, and fast-evolving and the effects of individual behavior and policy choices are not predictable. The paradox is that while the amount of data available to governments has increased exponentially, yet policymakers clearly struggle to make sense of it so that during the last years, the European Commission has decided to invest heavily in research on this issue. In this paper, the authors report about their experience in the CROSSROAD Project, whose main goal was to build a roadmap in order to provide strategic directions for future research in the domain of "ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling". The roadmap, recently approved by European Commission, intends to be the basis for developing a shared vision, inspire collaborative and interdisciplinary research between academia, business, civil society and government, and provide support and orientation to policy-modeling also after the project end. In this context, the paper analyzes the Model-based Governance issue as the part of the roadmap that suggests the development of advanced tools for an efficient and effective decision-making process.

PUBLISHED ON: Proceedings of the 22nd International System Dynamics Conference (ISDC) YEAR: 2004 ISBN: 0-9745329-0-8 AUTHOR/s: Armenia, Onori et al.- REFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: Armenia, Onori USED TOOL: POWERSIM DESCRIPTION: The implementation of specific management control/decision support systems, based on System Dynamics models, allow first for a better learning of the environmental dynamics which influence the economic behavior of the firm, and second, for a deep understanding of the results of the decisional policies which the Chemist himself, together with his collaborating staff, may choose among a plethora of strategic choices. By ignoring that "structure influences behavior", all the actions, even the ones deemed most brilliant, may have a very different result if the very nature of the environment is not clear. A system dynamics approach has helped identifying those modeling and conflict resolution policies which may help in conducting a group model building session, towards the sharing of a common mental model and the collegiality of decisions which, in the long run, may bring economic success to the Chemist's business.

YEAR: 2010 ISSN: 1996-1073 AUTHOR/s: Bassi REFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: Millennium Institute LINKS: http://www.millennium-institute.org/ DESCRIPTION: With the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 national leaders have startedinvestigating options for reducing carbon emissions within national borders. Despiteconfronting similar energy issues, every country that adopted the Kyoto Protocol has aunique energy strategy -being characterized by a different context, social, economicor environmental that influences the way different nations deal with climate change andother energy-related issues. Finding that currently available energy models are often toodetailed or narrowly focused to inform longer-term policy formulation and evaluation holistically, the present study proposes the utilization of an integrated cross-sectoralmedium to longer-term research and modeling approach, incorporating variousmethodologies to minimize exogenous assumptions and endogenously represent the keydrivers of the system analyzed. The framework proposed includes feedback, delays andnon-linearity and focuses on structure, scenarios and policies, requires a profoundcustomization of the model that goes beyond a new parameterization. The inclusion of social and environmental factors, in addition to economic ones, all unique to thegeographical area analyzed, allows for a wider analysis of the implication of policies byidentifying potential side effect or longer-term bottlenecks for socio-economicdevelopment and environmental preservation arising from cross-sectoral relations.

Catastrophic events have raised numerous issues concerning how effectively the built environment accommodates the evacuation needs of individuals with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities represent a significant, yet often overlooked, portion of the population disproportionately affected in emergency situations. Incorporating disability considerations into emergency evacuation planning, preparation, and other activities is critical. The most widely applied method used to evaluate how effectively the built environment accommodates emergency evacuations is agent-based or microsimulation modeling. However, current evacuation models do not adequately address individuals with disabilities in their simulated populations. This manuscript describes the BUMMPEE model, an agent-based simulation capable of classifying the built environment according to environmental characteristics and simulating a heterogeneous population according to variation in individual criteria. The method allows for simulated behaviors which more aptly represent the diversity and prevalence of disabilities in the population and their interaction with the built environment. Comparison of the results of an evacuation simulated using the BUMMPEE model is comparable to a physical evacuation with a similar population and setting. The results of the comparison indicate that the BUMMPEE model is a reasonable approach for simulating evacuations representing the diversity and prevalence of disability in the population.

This research note provides a general introduction to REsCape: an agent-based computational framework for studying the relationship between natural resources, ethnicity, and civil war. By permitting the user to specify: (i) different resource profiles ranging from a purely agrarian economy to one based on the artisanal or industrial extraction of alluvial or kimberlite diamonds; (ii) different patterns of ethnic domination, ethnic polarization, and varying degrees of ethnic salience; as well as (iii) specific modes of play for key agents, the framework can be used to assess the effects of key variables - whether taken in isolation or in various combinations - on the onset and duration of civil war. Our objective is to make REsCape available as an open source toolkit in the future, one that can be used, modified, and refined by students and scholars of civil war.

Abstract: Bangladesh exemplifies the complex challenges facing densely populated coastal regions. The pressures on the country are immense: around 145 million people live within an area of just 145,000 sq-km at the confluence of three major river systems: the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna. While progress has been made, poverty remains widespread, with around 39% of children under five malnourished. Most of its land-mass lies below 10m above sea level with considerable areas at sea level, leading to frequent and prolonged flooding during the monsoons. Sea level rise is leading to more flooding as storm surges rise off higher sea levels, pushing further inland. Higher sea levels also result in salt-water intrusion into freshwater coastal aquifers and estuaries, contaminating drinking water and farmland. Warmer ocean waters are also expected to lead to an increase in the intensity of tropical storms.

The potential for the Avian Flu (H5N1) virus to become a pandemic disease has mandated an examination of public health surveillance, response and containment strategies for developing countries. We have developed a Multi Agent System Simulation system known as IDESS (Infectious Disease Epidemic Simulation System) that rapidly constructs infectious disease models from existing data for any geographical region. This approach addresses an important area of infectious disease outbreak management, as it allows public health professionals to rapidly construct a simulation model for any geographic region and observe how an infectious disease spreads between communities. Such simulations will facilitate testing of containment strategies for rapid response.