(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 to [...]
Archive for the ‘Public Policy’ Category
From traffic management to development management?
Posted in Leadership, Organisations, Public Policy, Self organisation, Strategy, Traffic, Urbanisation on February 22, 2010 | 2 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 | 3 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 [...]
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 of [...]
“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 | 2 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 of [...]
What Complexity Theory Owes To Pacifism
Posted in Pacifism, Public Policy, Reports and Studies on December 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The December edition of Nature features as its cover article a summary of new research on complexity theory and war, entitled ‘The Ecology of War’.
It argues many collective human activities, including violence, have been shown to exhibit universal patterns. The research team, led by Neil Johnson, had previously shown that the distributions of casualties both in whole [...]
Bank of England Director uses complexity theory to explain global financial crisis
Posted in Financial crisis, Networks, Public Policy, Resilience, Strategy on December 16, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Andrew Haldane, Executive Director of Financial Stability at the Bank of England gave a speech earlier this year which focused on the idea of the global financial system as a complex adaptive system.
In his speech, Haldane focuses on applying the lessons from other network disciplines – such as ecology, epidemiology, biology and engineering – to the [...]
Lessons in Distributed Leadership from the Obama Campaign
Posted in Campaigns, Knowledge and learning, Leadership, Networks, Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy on December 4, 2009 | 2 Comments »
The Obama presidential campaign owed its victory not to a single charismatic candidate, but to the efforts of a disciplined and motivated organisation whose influences go back to landmark civil rights movements. Many of the principles were consistent with the emerging ideas of ‘complex adaptive leadership’.
A recent MIT lecture featured Marshall Ganz, veteran of the 1960s [...]
An Equation for Copenhagen: Conformity + Rapid Change = Collapse
Posted in Climate change, Public Policy, Resilience, Strategy on December 1, 2009 | 1 Comment »
American scientists using agent-based modeling techniques have linked excessive conformity to societal collapse and even mass extinction. The implications for the Copenhagen negotiations next week seem stark.
The researchers at Dalhousie University and the University of California-Davis have modeled how well different learning strategies work in different learning environments, and found that under certain circumstances societies can be doomed [...]
Urbanisation, complexity and poverty – or why aid agencies should be reading Jane Jacobs
Posted in Organisations, Public Policy, Strategy, Urbanisation on November 24, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Jane Jacobs, renowned urban scholar and grass-roots activist, has recently topped the Planetizen list of the 100 leading Urban Thinkers by an ’impossibly wide lead’.
Jacobs is something of a heroine for many communities around the world, real and virtual, not least the complexity science community. She approached cities as ecosystems and suggested that over time, buildings, streets [...]
Chaos, Complexity and Public Policy – An Interview with Irene Sanders
Posted in Public Policy, Strategy on November 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Woodrow Wilson Centre runs the Dialogue programme – weekly, half-hour raido and TV conversations with renowned public figures, scholars, journalists, and authors.
Early November saw a stimulating Dialogue interview with Irene Sanders, Director of the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy and author of “Strategic Thinking and the New Science: Planning in the Midst of Chaos, Complexity, [...]
