(2nd of 2 posts exploring self-organisation and emergence in transport / traffic and the relevance for aid strategies – first was last week’s piece on slime moulds) Traffic planners are increasingly moving away from signs and regulations to increase traffic safety and address congestion. Rather than legislating for driver behaviour, they are requiring drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists [...]
Archive for February, 2010
From traffic management to development management?
Posted in Leadership, Organisations, Public Policy, Self organisation, Strategy, Traffic, Urbanisation on February 22, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Slime mould, simple rules and the politics of self-organisation
Posted in Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Self organisation on February 15, 2010 | 4 Comments »
“Copying nature’s ideas allows people to harness the power of evolution to come up with clever products. Now a group of researchers has taken this idea a step further by using an entire living organism—a slime mould—to solve a complex problem. In this case, the challenge was to design an efficient rail network for the [...]
Evaluating Complex Development – Presentations and Meeting reports
Posted in Evaluation, Meetings, Reports and Studies on February 9, 2010 | 2 Comments »
October 2009 saw a seminar in Oxford on the topic of evaluation and complexity, the first in 2 such events planned by Mokoro, a development consultancy. Presentations from the seminar are available from the website, which include an excellent overview from Pip Bevan as well as specific examples of complexity-oriented evaluations. As the seminar summary states: [...]
New working paper on potential of complexity science in peace-building and conflict transformation
Posted in Conflict and peace building, Public Policy, Reports and Studies on February 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
This 2009 working paper by Diane Hendricks is an exploration of the usefulness of complexity theory in the the field of peace research and conflict intervention (to see other publications relevant to complexity and aid, visit the Aid on the Edge of Chaos Publications page) From the Executive Summary: The paper begins by outlining key features [...]
“There is no such thing as a natural disaster”: crises, complexity and the role of theory
Posted in Knowledge and learning, Natural disasters, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Reports and Studies, Resilience on February 3, 2010 | 4 Comments »
In the few weeks following the Haiti earthquake, much of our work at ALNAP has focused on getting key operational lessons from previous earthquakes into the hands and minds of operational agency staff, and briefing media representatives on a variety of issues related to the relief and recovery work. As the initial signs of some kind [...]
