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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: 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.

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.

REFERENCE PEOPLE/ORGANISATION: XJ-Technologies LINKS: http://www.xjtek.com/ DESCRIPTION: AnyLogic is the only tool that supports all the most common simulation methodologies in place today: System Dynamics, Process-centric (AKA Discrete Event), and Agent Based Modeling. The unique flexibility of the modeling language enables the user to capture the complexity and heterogeneity of business, economic and social systems to any desired level of detail. AnyLogic's graphical interface, tools, and library objects allow you to quickly model diverse areas such as manufacturing and logistics, business processes, human resources, consumer and patient behavior. The object-oriented model design paradigm supported by AnyLogic provides for modular, hierarchical, and incremental construction of large models.

HDI Forum III: The Health Datapalooza promises to bring together a diverse group of data experts, technology developers, entrepreneurs, policy makers, health care system leaders, CIOs, CTOs, and community advocates to support innovative applications of health and health care data. The Health Data Initiative (HDI), originally launched in 2010 by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the Community Health Data Initiative, is a public-private collaboration that encourages innovators to utilize health data to develop applications to raise awareness of health and health system performance and spark community action to improve health. The Forum will feature keynote addresses, an Apps Expo, demonstrations of new, cutting-edge apps, and thought-provoking panel discussions. There will also be plenty of time for networking and one-on-one interaction. It is a great opportunity to be in on the vanguard of data applications to improve health and health care. This year's event promises to be one you do not want to miss!

interesting case of data-intensive policy-making

Access paper here: http://www.albany.edu/~gpr/SmallModels.pdf

"Traditional policy analysis approaches are characterized by a focus on system modeling and choosing among policy alternatives. While successful in many cases, this approach has been increasingly criticized for being technocratic and ignoring the behavioral and political dimensions of most policy processes. In recent decades, increased awareness of the multi-actor, multiple perspective, and poly-centric character of many policy processes has led to the development of a variety of different perspectives on the styles and roles of policy analysis, and to new analytical tools and approaches - for example, argumentative approaches, participative policy analysis, and negotiation support. As a result, the field has become multi-faceted and somewhat fragmented. Public Policy Analysis: New Developments acknowledges the variety of approaches and provides a synthesis of the traditional and new approaches to policy analysis. It provides an overview and typology of different types of policy analytic activities, characterizing them according to differences in character and leading values, and linking them to a variety of theoretical notions on policymaking. Thereby, it provides assistance to both end users and analysts in choosing an appropriate approach given a specific policy situation. By broadening the traditional approach and methods to include the analysis of actors and actor networks related to the policy issue at hand, it deepens the state of the art in certain areas. While the main focus of the book is on the cognitive dimensions of policy analysis, it also links the policy analysis process to the policymaking process, showing how to identify and involve all relevant stakeholders in the process, and how to create favorable conditions for use of the results of policy analytic efforts by the policy actors."

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.

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.

Forio simulations improve public policy development and implementation by allowing you to: *Model sophisticated behaviors by importing data and formulas from Excel, AnyLogic, and other programs. *Have global access to your Sim via popular web browsers. *Control access with secure user privileges. *Implement updates centrally, ensuring users have the most up-to-date information (preventing old or obselete info from being reused). *Operate worry-free, with dependable security and design measures. Customized simulations apps are easily accessible via standard web browsers, allowing users to easily make adjustments, share and compare results. With Forio's public policy simulations, users can create interactive online tools to generate, manipulate and illustrate "what if" scenarios that are ideal for long-term policy models.With Forio's public policy simulations, users can create interactive online tools to generate, manipulate and illustrate "what if" scenarios that are ideal for long-term policy models.

easy ready made tool to turn system dynamics models into playable games.

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.

Climate Interactive is building a community that creates, shares, and uses credible models, accessible simulations, and related media in order to improve the way leaders and citizens around the world think about the climate. Our purpose is to get these sims and insights into the world as accessible products so they can be tweaked, enhanced, translated, distributed and used to power change around the world. We're building sims that are easy to use by climate analysts, communicators, and leaders of many types, and that provide immediate feedback, so users can see the results of different scenarios on atmospheric carbon levels and temperature. And we're sharing our own analysis so that leaders have access to powerful insights. In particular, the "Climate Action Initiative" which includes policy leaders such as Dr. Robert Corell is using our simulations to make change at the highest levels of governments.

In today's hyper-connected world, social media and online customer interactions are changing the way companies do business from the outside in. Leading brands recognize that their customers are both passionate and vocal about their products and services, and they are sharing their experiences in conversations every day. Until recently, however, social monitoring tools allowed you to listen to these conversations, but lacked the sophisticated analytics capabilities needed to derive critical business insights. Attensity enables you to go beyond mere social media monitoring to: LISTEN to social customer conversations from over 75 million online sources, including the full Twitter Firehose, Facebook, blogs, communities, forums and other sources. ANALYZE those conversations for key business insights, going beyond basic sentiment to get detailed reports on customer feedback about new products, campaigns, brands, service and support, and other business drivers. RELATE that intelligence to structured data within your existing customer systems such as CRM, ERP, BI, EFM and other systems. ACT with a Playbook that allows you to take charge of emerging issues and manage the customer experience based on your own organizational structure and business processes.

The lack of shared expert knowledge capacity in the U.S. Congress has created a critical weakness in our democratic process.Along with bipartisan cooperation, many contemporary and urgent questions before our legislators require nuance, genuine deliberation and expert judgment. Congress, however, is missing adequate means for this purpose and depends on outdated and in some cases antiquated systems of information referral, sorting, communicating, and convening.

also saw that in PIN mailing list