Futurelearn-GLOBAL SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND POLICY (2)

Futurelearn-GLOBAL SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND POLICY (1)

Feedback loops don’t always balance. In the UK the population is relatively stable over time, but an ageing population already creates policy problems such as funding health and welfare services for the elderly. In contrast, births and deaths do not balance in South Africa which has a relatively young population.
http://www.systemdynamics.org/what-is-s/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html

Multi-Level System
Macro Level-National Government
Lower Macro Level-Ministry of Health, Department for Communities and Local Government
Upper Meso-Local Health Authority, Local Council
Lower Meso-Ambulances, GPs, A&E, Hospitals, … Social Care Unit, Care Home
Upper Micro-(Sam + District Nurse), (Sam + Doctor), … (Sam + Social Worker), (Sam + Voluntary Worker)
Micro-Sam, District Nurse, Doctor, … Sam, Social Worker, Voluntary Workers
Systemic problems and policy  -the bed blocking problem
Department of Health statistics show that over the course of a year more than 680,000 elderly people treated by the NHS languish on wards for weeks, even though they are well enough to be looked after in a care home or at home with social services support. … Failure by ministers to tackle the problem, the loss of almost 50,000 council and private care home beds over the last five years, rising demand and social services budget cuts are blamed for the shambles. … Meanwhile, cancelled operations – directly linked to a lack of beds – have soared from 3,733 during the first quarter of 2000 to 4,881 this year.1According to the Independent newspaper, the opposition Labour Party blames the delays and bed-blocking on cuts of £3.5 billion to social care budgets since 2010 causing more elderly people to be admitted to hospital instead of being cared for at home. The problem is that the NHS pays when patients are in hospital, but when they are in community care the local council pays for them. The NHS and councils have different staff, separate budgets, and different priorities. Also, when a patient is transferred to a hospital in another county, another NHS trust must pay for them. To further complicate matters, if an elderly patient from one town is admitted to hospital in another they cannot access community care services there because they are not a resident. Instead, they must wait for someone from their local authority to come to assess them and organise care in their own community. This process can take a long time and it means patients can be stuck blocking a hospital bed for weeks. It is estimated that bed blocking by elderly patients costs the NHS £820 million a year
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-feels-the-strain-as-hospital-bed-blocking-by-elderly-patients-hits-record-levels-10125422.htmlhttp://www.itv.com/news/2016-05-26/delays-in-discharging-older-patients-costs-nhs-820-million-a-year/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-78550/Bed-blocking-elderly-patients-rises.html
Complex Systems
There is a growing consensus that the science of complex systems will increasingly play a role in policy generation and evaluation.
There is no agreement on how the word ‘complex’ should be defined, but there is wide consensus that complexity can arise in systems that have one or more of the following properties:
many heterogeneous parts, e.g. a city, a company, markets, riots
dynamics emerge from interactions of agents, e.g. traffic, markets
sensitivity to initial conditions, e.g. weather systems, investments
path-dependence – history matters, e.g. elections, famine, war
network connectivities, e.g. gossip, epidemics, copying, banker networks
adaptation to changing environments, e.g. business, opinions, agriculture
co-evolving subsystems, e.g. land-use and transport, virus software
feedback loops, e.g. house prices, opinion polls, critical tweets, copying
reflexivity, e.g. people may respond to predictions by doing the opposite
globality – everything affects everything else, e.g. biofuel and starvation.

http://www.paulormerod.com/
http://connectedthebook.com/
http://barabasi.com/book/linked|
DataGotham @datagotham
https://www.youtube.com/user/DataGotham
http://101.datascience.community/tag/data-gotham/

Futurelearn-GLOBAL SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND POLICY (1)

GLOBAL SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND POLICY 

UNESCO UNITWIN COMPLEX SYSTEMS DIGITAL CAMPUS
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/global-systems-science

UNITWIN是大學聯盟和聯網計劃的縮寫http://www.unesco.org/en/university-twinning-and-networking/university-twinning-and-networking/

複雜系統數字校園
http://www.cs-dc.org/
聯合國教科文組織負責協調教育，科學，文化和傳播領域的國際合作。 它加強了國家和社會之間的聯繫，並動員廣大公眾，兒童：
https://en.unesco.org

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/resources/publications/unesdoc-database/
http://www.unesco.org/library/
http://www.unesco.org/archives/new2010/index.html


以證據為基礎(evidence-based)的政策
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/cabinet-office

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-works-evidence-centres-for-social-policy
誰有資格成為決策者？
政策有兩面。第一個是規範(normative)的，使世界成為它應該是的。第二個是技術性(technical)的：既然已經決定了這個世界應該如何，那怎麼能實現呢？

例如，假設你住在一個小鎮，而你的一些同胞卻厭倦了交通堵塞。你是一個專業的交通工程師，可以看到交通流量可以大大提高（技術專業），但你認為這是一個壞主意，因為它會減損城市的魅力（作為公民的規範）。這是你所在城鎮（政治）的一個熱門話題，一個新的市長被選為承諾改善交通流量（民選代表制定政策規範）。作為一名知名和受人尊敬的交通工程師，市長請您協助制定新的政策（對技術專業知識的官方要求）。即使你討厭這個想法（作為一個個體的規範），你也同意幫助，作為一個專業人員，你會做最好的工作（作為專家不感興趣）。市長召集一個城鎮會議（參與公民）為你解釋各種可能性及其利弊（幫助建立政策選擇）。然後政治家和公民討論他們認為各種選擇（規範性）的好壞，並出現一個政策（民主決策）。

您作為專家的角色類似於科學家在全球系統科學中的角色。科學家必須作為一個無私的專家，必須把他們的價值觀和信仰放在一邊。這個政策是由政客和公民制定的。科學家可以幫助制定和調查特定政策的後果，但是政治家和公民決定採取哪些特定政策並採取行動。

所以，政治家和公民是決策者，但科學家卻不是。當然，這並不總是如此簡單。科學家也是公民，但我們區分科學家提供無私的專業知識和科學家作為公民。

大多數政治家是當選的，但很多決策者卻不是。例如，教科文組織，國際貨幣基金組織和歐洲聯盟等組織的官員制定的政策具有深遠的地方和全球影響。警方和武裝部隊官員制定政策保持國際和國內秩序，世界衛生組織官員制定政策防止或遏制流行病。這些都是由政治家監督的。

宗教領袖也制定政策。例如，天主教會禁止人工避孕。有些人認為這是對人們世俗生活的侵犯。然而，天主教徒原則上是免費的，無視這一禁令。這可以與未經選舉的群體對比，強迫他們的宗教觀點，包括拒絕對女孩的教育。

壓力團體成員影響政策。大眾傳媒 - 廣播，電視，報刊，越來越多的互聯網 - 也影響政策，並經常推動政策敘述。在民主國家，許多非選舉人影響政策，對當選政治家的權力提供必要的製衡。

包括公民作為決策者的聲音越來越重要，因為他們的聲音可以通過社交媒體找到新的方式。我們視頻中的Tidworth媽媽表明，公民可以被信任成為決策者，普通民眾有權組織，創建和管理他們在地方一級需要的服務。在這種情況下，地方議會和軍隊的中層決策者共同努力，使媽媽們能夠制定和實施他們的基層政策。這個經驗然後過濾了通知更高級決策。

科學與政策之間的倫理聯繫
在這門課程中，“科學家”將包括所有學科，例如物理學，化學，生物學，醫學，數學，信息學，地理學，經濟學，社會學，人類學，心理學，政府和語言學。一般而言，政策要求來自不同領域的專家在跨學科團隊中一起工作，能夠為複雜的社會技術系統建模。

如上所述，從這個課程的角度來看，科學家不是決策者。我們對政客和科學家進行了非常明確的區分。前者有選擇和執行政策的授權和資金，而後者則沒有。當選的政治家有道義上的權威來使這個世界“應該”成為現實，他們有錢來執行他們的政策。相反，如果沒有當局的批准，科學家開始社會變革可能是不道德的。有時科學家有實施變革所需的資金，例如在蓋茨基金會的支持下，通常這種變化是與當選的決策者合作進行的。

在實踐中，科學家和決策者之間的區別並不那麼密切

https://creativecommons.org/blog/

A Course Participant's Comment
The scientist's role should be that of probing into the challenge (anything negatively affecting the macro/micro cosmic) with a view of discovering its causes and what to do to minimize or to eradicate it all together. On the other hand the role of policy makers should be that of formulating problem solving implementation plan (deciding how to put to action knowledge provided by the scientist) and implementation tracking tools.
科學家的角色應該是探索挑戰（對宏觀/微觀宇宙有負面影響的任何事物），以發現其原因，以及如何最大限度地減少或根除這一問題。 另一方面，決策者的角色應該是製定解決問題的實施計劃（決定如何行動科學家提供的知識）和實施跟踪工具
.I distinguish: 
- policy design: typically done by civil servants and representatives of the relevant civil society 
- policy setting: done by democratically mandated politicians or civil servants overseen by such politicians (or by the voters by means of a referendum) 
- policy evaluation: done by civil servants and civil society
So: politicians decide; civil servants and civil society evaluates, prepares and proposes policy 
PS1: the pope does not make policy outside Vatican City (he might suggest policy, but it are still the politicians who decide - even in Ireland, welcome to the 21 first century-).
PS2: academics have a limited role: they are mainly "hired guns" recruited by civil servants and civil society
我區分：
- 政策設計：通常由公務員和有關民間社會的代表完成
- 政策制定：由民主授權的政治家或由這種政治家監督的公務員（或通過公民投票選舉）
- 政策評估：由公務員和公民社會進行
所以：政客們決定; 公務員和公民社會進行評估，準備和提出政策
PS1：教皇不在梵蒂岡城外制定政策（他可能會提出政策建議，但政治家們仍然決定 - 即使在愛爾蘭，也歡迎到21世紀）。
PS2：學者角色有限：主要是公務員和民間社會招募的“僱用槍支
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公民在政策循環policy loop
公民處於社會現實social reality和敘事，數據和模型以及政策和社會行動的中心。公民參Citizen engagement 與是全球系統科學的基礎。

傳統科學通常假定研究客觀現象 objective phenomena,，而社會現實是在個體之間的相互作用中構建的，而這些社會的相互作用interactions對於維持社會現實是必要的。社會建構Social constructs是人的決定而不是客觀實在objective reality的結果，敘事narratives是一種導航和建構現實navigate and construct reality.的方式。

人的行為是自反reflexive 的，這意味著人們可以對預言作出反應，或者使自己實現預言或故意偽造self-fulfilling prophesies or deliberately falsifying預言。例如，預測商店將用完食品會導致恐慌性購買，導致商店裡的食物不足。又如，候選人將贏得選舉的預測會使選民改變voters switch，而預測則變成錯誤的。此外，有些人是逆向contrarian 的 - 預測他們會做一件事，他們會做另一件事。所以政策不能對人做事，就得跟人做。

互聯網，尤其是社交媒體的興起，賦予了每個人以敘述的力量narrative power，從而將其與權威分離decoupled it from authority  - 例如，阿拉伯之春的Twitter革命，Facebook上的政治運動以博主。作為輿論製造者

阿拉伯之春顯示，人民力量可以推翻政權topple regimes，但這是一個過程的開始而不是結束。

作為自下而上的網絡應對製度不公正bottom-up web-enabled response to institutional injustice,的另一個例子，”Black Lives Matter是一個起源於美國的思想和政治運動，以回應黑人被系統故意“有針對性地滅亡”targeted for demise。這種自下而上的運動的全球性表現為向包括加拿大，德國和英國在內的其他國家傳播。

你怎麼看？


除了在選舉中投票之外，公民是否有地方政策？公民權力能工作嗎？公民有可能從事政策嗎？隨著世界日益聯繫ever-more connected，公民是否可能參與政策呢？
After the Arab Spring – Democratic Aspirations and State Failure阿拉伯之春後的民主願望與國家失敗

https://www.coursera.org/learn/after-the-arab-spring

 Course Participants' Comments

I do believe that citizens should be involved in policy making. Where there may be a lack of understanding of the wider issues the policy making procedure can help to inform and educate - provided it is done in an unbiased and non-directed fashion. However, in my experience this is rarely an objective exercise. For example NHS "consultations" are inherently structured to direct people to a particular choice or conclusion, and any caveats or areas of concern are ignored. Likewise local government consultations can often be offered as a variety of choices, none of which may actually be what the population want, and so they opt for the lesser of the various poor choices. Very few of these methods would pass a university ethics board in my view. 

So for me it is not a case of whether they should be involved but HOW they are involved, how their input is interpreted, who does the interpreting and whether review and rebuttal is accepted.

我相信公民應該參與決策。 如果政策制定程序可能對更廣泛的問題缺乏了解，則可以幫助進行宣傳和教育 - 只要這種做法是以不偏不倚和不直接的方式unbiased and non-directed fashion進行的。 不過，以我的經驗來看，這很少是客觀的做法。 例如，NHS的“協商consultations ”本質上是用來指導inherently structured to direct人們做出特定的選擇或結論，而忽視ignore任何警告caveats或關注的領域areas of concern 。 同樣Likewise，地方政府的磋商往往可以作為各種選擇提供，其中沒有一個實際上可能是人口所需要的，所以他們選擇較差的選擇。 在我看來，這些方法中很少會通過大學倫理委員會。

所以對我來說，是不是應該參與其中，而是涉及到他們如何參與，他們如何解釋他們的意見，誰的口譯以及審查和反駁是否被接受

On the nature of an engaged democracy: There are over 7.6 billion people in the world and Athenian-style direct democracy is no longer practicable, even if we have the communication tools to enable it to happen. If are going to debate every item of policy and put everything to a plebiscite, we're never going to get anywhere. It's going to be a fractured, chaotic, multi-polar world. There is a practical limit to citizen engagement. If we want it, we should only use it for the most significant issues. It is a powerful tool, but beware the nature of the debate that ensues.

On the nature of debate: There is a difference between, on the one hand, relating personal experience so that other people can see your position, and, on the other, advocating a position led purely by self-interest.

On balancing divergence: Even if citizen engagement exists and a debate is conducted in a civil fashion, how do we avoid tyranny of the majority

從事民主的性質：世界上有超過七十六億的人民，雅典式的直接民主已經不再可行，即使我們有交流的工具可以使之發生。 如果要討論每一項政策，把所有事情都投入到公民投票中，我們永遠都不會去。 這將是一個斷裂，混亂，多極的世界。 公民參與有一個實際的限制。 如果我們想要的話，我們只能用它來解決最重要的問題。 這是一個有力的工具，但要注意隨之而來的辯論的性質。

關於辯論的性質：一方面，關於個人經驗，讓其他人可以看到你的立場，另一方面，主張一個純粹是由自身利益所引導的立場是有區別的。

平衡分歧：即使存在公民參與，以民間的方式進行辯論，我們如何避免大多數的暴政呢？

公民作為決策者

有些人可能會懷疑全球系統科學中“公民參與”的價值和實用性。我們邀請您來討論這個問題，特別是如果您不確定這個問題是必要的或者可以工作的話。在歐洲，政策制定者擔心公眾脫離政策和政策的建立，這可能導致整個歐洲項目的解體。英國離開歐盟2016年6月意外的51.9％ - 48.1％的公投投票顯示，對歐洲政策的後果感到深刻的不滿 deep dissatisfaction，並可能傳染contagion給其他歐洲國家。最近的荷蘭和法國大選的結果表明這種蔓延不會發生。歐盟委員會通過各種舉措initiatives回應了公民的異化，其中包括可持續發展和社會創新集體意識平台Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation(CAPS)

:預計CAPS將支持環保意識的基層進程和實踐，以分享知識，實現生活方式，生產和消費模式的改變，並建立更多的參與性民主進程。 （歐盟委員會）。有充分的理由相信公民參與政策的新形式是可能的。在美國，社交媒體已被用來增加選民投票率voter turnout.。此外，複雜性科學家正在對社會行為以及我們如何相互影響給予新的見解。選民的冷漠voter apathy可能會在我們的社交網絡的一系列變化cascade of change across our social networks.中被沖走swept away。
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/collective-awareness

Course Participants' Comments
在全球社交媒體不受阻礙的情況下，如果掌權者選擇傾聽，就有可能提高意識。 為眾多的聲音。 但是它可能會對個人生活和財產產生“均衡”的影響，有些則以犧牲其他人的利益為代價。 歷史表明，在政治上可以操縱維持或者獲得優勢，不僅增強自我， 而是國家的自身利益。 全球系統科學有可能獲得一些成功; 這取決於觀點，但它是許多全球國家體系的附加物add-on，而不是替代物

公民們想要參與，但冷漠起源 apathy stems from於“不被傾聽”的感覺和政府的家長式態度 paternalistic attitude。 溝通和傾聽communication, and listening，必須是一個客觀，開放和雙向objective, open and two way 的過程。 公民需要看到政策制定者和政治家是負責任的accountable ，當公眾輿論強烈反對某項政策時，則由it is up to 當選官員設法解決問題to  seek ways to address the concerns.。 當我們以“我們最好”的態度對待他們，或者不顧公民意願irrespective of citizens wishes而延續意識形態的政治目標 perpetuate ideological political goals的時候，或者完全脫離接觸complete disengagement ，或者最終導致政治動盪/不安unrest/upset（結果有時候會變得遲鈍obtuse）。 因此Hence，適當proper和客觀的參與有助於正確執行（我認為目前不是 - 公民諮詢的要求正在被激化gamed)
公民和投票查看2條評論

在英國，有35％的人口沒有參加2015年的大選。 在2012年的美國總統選舉中，有55％的人沒有投票。 在法國，2012年總統選舉中有54％的人沒有投票。 在2014年印度大選general election中，有34％的人沒有投票，這是有史以來最好的投票率。 這對公民參與政策過程提出了挑戰。
Epidemiology 
Individual to individual infection drives epidemics at the microlevel, when diseases are passed from one infected person to susceptible non-infected people. Usually infections spread when what is called the basic reproduction number is greater than one, i.e. an infected person must infect at least one other person for the disease to spread. The higher its basic reproduction number the more likely it is for the disease to spread. There are many other factors involved in the spread of disease at the microlevel.1

Cities and settlements enable diseases to spread at the mesolevel. It is estimated that by 2030 more than 60% of the world’s population will live in cities. This raises important questions, such as: How can an outbreak be contained before it becomes an epidemic, and what disease surveillance strategies should be implemented?2

Air-transportation is mainly responsible for the global patterns of emerging diseases, and the complexity of the air travel network underlies the heterogeneous and seemingly erratic global scale spreading of diseases such as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).3

Policy is made at all levels – micro-, meso- and macro-scales. The terms micro, meso and macro are commonly used to characterise systems at different scales. We use micro to mean the level of the individual person and macro to mean the global scale. The term meso is used to refer to intermediate scales, and there can be many meso levels, e.g. from the neighbourhood to the city, to the state, to regions such as Africa, Latin America and Europe. Multilevel systems will be considered in Week 2.

At the microlevel, individual health workers must put in place policies that will work on the ground. At the mesolevel national scale, governments have committees that assess and set policies to contain local epidemics. At the macrolevel global scale, during emergencies, the World Health Organisation’s operational role includes leading and coordinating the health response in support of countries, undertaking risk assessments, identifying priorities and setting strategies, providing critical technical guidance, supplies and financial resources as well as monitoring the health situation.

Herbert W. Hethcote, ‘The Mathematics of Infectious Diseases’,
www.maths.usyd.edu.au/u/marym/populations/hethcote.pdf

.‘Modelling disease outbreaks in realistic urban social networks’,
 Letters to Nature, Nature, Vol 429 13 May 2004. 180-184
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
8565252_Modeling_Disease_Outbreaks_in_Realistic_Urban_Social_Networks‘The role of the airline transportation network in the prediction and predictability of global epidemics’, Proc National Academy of Sciences, Feb 14, 2006, vol. 103, no. 7. 2015-2020.
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/7/2015.full
Finance
在2008年金融危機之後，很顯然，經濟失敗可能會迅速跨越 rapidly cascade 機構和國界而層層疊疊。特別是銀行和金融是全球性的系統。在現代金融體系中，錯綜複雜的債權債務網絡將各種中介機構（如銀行和對沖基金）的資產負債表連接起來，形成網絡結構。信貸違約掉期和債務抵押債券等複雜金融產品的出現，進一步提高了這些資產負債表的連接的複雜性。正如金融危機所表明的那樣，特別是在雷曼兄弟倒閉和美國國際集團（AIG）的救援方面，這些相互依賴為反饋因素創造了一個環境，​​以對金融體系的衝擊產生更大的反應。他們還難以評估金融機構受困境或完全違約的行為所帶來的傳染風險。

稅收和避稅也是全球系統：騙稅和逃稅影響了我們所有人。它發生在一個國家內部以及歐盟和全球各個國家。這就是為什麼一個國家不能自行解決問題的原因。歐盟和成員國需要在國際上共同努力，共同解決國內外的問題


就銀行而言，系統的相互關聯的性質以及相關的全球風險在2008年的崩潰之前並沒有得到廣泛的認可。在避稅的情況下，個人和跨國公司正在利用全球稅收體系的網絡結構 - 全球結構不被任何國家稅收機構理解

Following the financial crash of 2008, it became clear that economic failure could rapidly cascade across institutions and national boundaries. In particular it became clear that banking and finance are global systems.

In modern financial systems, an intricate web of claims and obligations links the balance sheets of a wide variety of intermediaries, such as banks and hedge funds, into a network structure. The advent of sophisticated financial products, such as credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations, has heightened the complexity of these balance sheet connections still further. As demonstrated by the financial crisis, especially in relation to the failure of Lehman Brothers and the rescue of American International Group (AIG), these interdependencies have created an environment for feedback elements to generate amplified responses to shocks to the financial system. They have also made it difficult to assess the potential for contagion arising from the behaviour of financial institutions under distress or from outright default.1

Taxation and tax avoidance are also global systems:Tax fraud and tax evasion affects us all. It occurs within a country and across countries both within the EU and globally. That is why a single country cannot solve the problem on its own. The EU and Member States need to work more together and internationally to combat the problem at home and abroad.2

In the case of banks, the interconnected nature of the system and associated global risk were not widely recognised before the crash of 2008. In the case of tax avoidance, individuals and multinational companies are exploiting the network structure of the global tax system – a global structure not well understood by any national tax collection authority.

European Commission, ‘The fight against tax fraud and tax evasion’
https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/fight-against-tax-fraud-tax-evasion_en ‘Contagion in financial networks’, Working Paper No. 383, Publications Group, Bank of England
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1577043
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/Working-papers

Cities“Cities are the crucible of civilization. They have been expanding, urbanization has been expanding, at an exponential rate in the last 200 years so that by the second part of this century, the planet will be completely dominated by cities. Cities are the origins of global warming, impact on the environment, health, pollution, disease, finance, economies, energy – they’re all problems that are confronted by having cities. That’s where all these problems come from. And the tsunami of problems that we feel we’re facing in terms of sustainability questions are actually a reflection of the exponential increase in urbanization across the planet.”Geoffrey West points out that that China is building 300 new cities in the next 20 years, and that every week for the foreseeable future more than a million people are being added to our cities.

Geoffrey West and his colleagues have conducted remarkable research on cities. Across the world, irrespective of culture and history, they have shown many surprising relationships. For example, as city size increases the number of petrol stations per capita decreases, and this economy of scale holds in cities worldwide. The same is true for lengths of roads, electricity lines, and other infrastructure. In contrast to this ‘sub-linear scaling’, some social phenomena have ‘super-linear scaling’. For example, the average wage increases with city size, as do crime, cases of AIDS and flu, the number of patents, and many many other variables.Apart from these surprising similarities, cities interact in many other ways. They compete for business, tourism, and prestigious projects such as the Olympic Games.

Cities and transportation-At the mesolevel, urban transport is essential for citizens to perform their daily activities, but at the same time constitutes one of the major sources of urban pollution (Green House Gas emissions, local air quality, noise), directly affecting citizens’ health and well-being. The quest for environmentally sustainable urban transport, while ensuring competitiveness and addressing social concerns such as health problems or the needs of persons with reduced mobility, is a common and urgent challenge for all major cities in Europe.

Cities and ICT--The massive penetration of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is modifying social relationships and travel behaviour, and providing a huge amount of heterogeneous data: intelligent transport systems, internet social networks, mobile phone call logs, e-transactions. Urban transportation models can simulate the interactions between social networks and travel behaviour, e.g. the influence of social networks on the planning of joint trips. This will allow a more comprehensive assessment of mobility policies, particularly of new services emerging around the idea of a shared access to resources, such as car sharing. The new travel behaviour models will increasingly be integrated into state-of-the-art agent-based simulation tools. This will be part of the wider smart city movement.2 If you are interested, there is a FutureLearn course on Smart Cities.3

Cities and global finance---At the macrolevel, cities form a global system in which they complement and compete with each other. For example, London competes successfully with financial centres around the world to be a hub for global finance. At the national level, the government gains significant revenue from the finance sector and, at the individual level, there are some very well paid and wealthy individuals.

The overheated housing market of London is attributed to investors from Russia, China and other countries. In a capricious world London is an attractive place to protect individual and corporate wealth. A consequence is that individual Londoners can pay very high rents or prices for even modest apartments. However, the housing market is complicated. At the top end of the market house prices are currently falling while at the bottom end prices continue to rise. Other global cities have similar problems and apply differing policies to supply more accommodation, regulate rents, and so on. With increasing global populations and increasing pay gaps, the upward pressure on property prices in global cities seems inexorable. As Mark Twain said, ‘buy land – they don’t make it any more’

The maths of Cities and Corporations
https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations
Geoffrey West
https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west
Smart Cities
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/smart-cities
London house prices: The capital's crazy property market explained
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/london-house-prices-capitals-crazy-property-market-explained-1538615
MK:Smart, Research into Smart Cities
http://www.mksmart.org/about/

 InternetWho Owns the Internet? Ownership as a Legal Basis for American by M Muller - ‎2005 -ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1310&context=iplj

The internet exemplifies the ‘very local – completely global’ nature of global systems.
At the local level there are billions of individual users accessing and interacting with the global resource of billions of web pages. There are many intermediate level structures such as companies and other organisations, service providers, the Cloud, and governments.The internet enables many other global structures to function including finance and cities. It makes Big Data accessible and supports the explosion in communications seen over the last decade.

Many revolutionary changes in social behaviour at the individual and group levels are facilitated by interactions on the web. These range from intense personal interaction through Facebook, to online shopping, online banking, and interactions with government agencies.Despite making a big contribution to social life, however, the internet has a dark side through malign activities including cybercrime, cyberbullying, exploitative pornography, terrorist propaganda, intrusive state surveillance, etc.

There are many policy issues relating to online activity, concerning what people, institutions, and government agencies are capable of doing, and allowed to do.For example, it was recently reported that Facebook is targeting vulnerable young people while Apple refuses the FBI’s demand to make iPhone data easier to access, and governments rail against their secrets being exposed by organisations such as Wikileaks. However, policy makers struggle in their attempts to control the internet since it is not owned or controlled by anyone.1

The European General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) is a major attempt to regulate the internet;
 EU data protection rules mean that your personal data can only be processed in certain situations and under certain conditions, such as: if you’ve given your consent (you must be informed that your data is being collected); if data processing is needed for a contract, for a job application or a loan request; if there is a legal obligation for your data to be processed; if processing is in your ‘vital interest’, for example if a doctor needs access to your private medical data when you’ve had an accident; if processing is needed to carry out tasks in the public interest or tasks carried out by government, tax authorities, the police or other public bodies;  Personal data about your racial or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership or health may not be processed except in specific cases (e.g. when you’ve given explicit consent or when processing is needed for reasons of substantial public interest, on the basis of EU or national law)
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/telecoms-internet/data-protection-privacy/index_en.htm
Climate Change                                                                                                                                      The “Anthropocene” is the global system. It was originally proposed as a geological epoch in which humans have become a dominant driver of Earth System change. It reflects the nature, scale and magnitude of human impacts on the Earth.It is an ‘inconvenient truth’ that one of these impacts is that the way we live is causing irreversible climate change.The climate system includes the atmosphere and the oceans with dynamics that operate at the global scale. The physical world, including the climate system, is increasingly interacting with socio-economic systems at national and local scales. Global warming is one consequence of this interaction.

The leaders of most nations now agree that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming, and that policies are required to reduce emissions. However, getting nations to agree global policy has proved very difficult, e.g. the US Senate did not ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and in 2001 President Bush withdrew the USA from the Kyoto process.192 governments convened for the UN 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen, but high expectations resulted only in a controversial political declaration, the Copenhagen Accord.This can be seen as policy failure at the global level. Richard Black suggests that this was due to some governments not wanting a global deal, the US political system making its negotiators unable to commit its legislator to a deal, bad timing through Obama being a new and unestablished US president, various errors by the host government, the weather, 24-hour news culture, EU politics, and campaigners getting their strategies wrong.Global Systems Science sees policy making as a process in which possible solutions to perceived problems are co-created and evaluated by policy makers, scientists, and citizens.The views and values of nations can be represented by a single person, but that person is subject to human frailties – not least getting tired and jaded after many hours of negotiations.

In December 2015 there was another attempt to reach global agreement in Paris. According to the EU3, it had to deliver a robust international agreement that fulfilled the following key criteria:

-create a common legal framework that applies to all countries;

include clear, fair and ambitious targets for all countries based on evolving global economic and national circumstances

-regularly review and strengthen countries’ targets in light of the below 2 degrees goal (scientists fear that a temperature increase of 2 degrees or more will cause dangerous and irreversible changes to the global climate).

-hold all countries accountable – to each other and to the public – for meeting their targets.

The hosts of the Paris meeting learned many lessons from Copenhagen, and on Saturday 12 Dec 2015 an historic agreement was signed

https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_warns_on_latest_climate_trends?language=en
http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015300546?via%3Dihub
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8426835.stm?ad=1
https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/negotiations/paris_en

An overview of Global Systems Science In this first week you have seen examples of global systems. The diagram below shows how science can support policy making.

Diagram showing science embedded in the policy making process

Global Systems Science is concerned with the interface between science and policy, and tries to clarify how policy makers and scientists can best work together.In general, policy makers are interested in getting things done, while scientists are concerned with developing new methods and theories. It is quite natural that scientists and policy makers should have different agendas, although some policy makers are also scientists and some scientists are also elected politicians. 

On the left-hand side of the diagram citizens and politicians decide the policy objectives and constraints.In the middle, policy makers generate and evaluate possible policies to achieve their objectives. This is where scientists can help. In particular scientists can help evaluate policy suggestions. In some cases this may involve building elaborate computer models to investigate possible policy outcomes. Scientists can also help generate policies by providing policy makers with computer tools to synthesise data and providing easily understood visualisations of policy outcomes.

Ideally, policy makers, scientists, and other stakeholders work together in the centre of the diagram. Sometimes during this process the stakeholders decide to revisit the objectives and constraints on the left in order to generate acceptable policies.

When acceptable policies have been formulated they are usually subject to further political processes as shown on the right of the diagram, as those politicians and citizens not involved in formulating the policy have their say.

Global Systems Science has four main elements, as shown below.
Policy at all levels, from individuals to the world: How can we know which, if any, proposed policy options will work?
The new, interdisciplinary approach: how the science of complex social, economic, political, biological, physical and environmental systems can inform policy makers in their work.
Data science and computational modelling for policy makers: policy informatics provides new, policy-oriented methods of modelling complex systems on computers.
Citizen engagement: a central concept of GSS is that the behaviour of social systems emerges bottom-up, from the interactions of individuals and institutions, in the context of top-down policy constraints. The reflexive nature of social science – that predictions can change behaviour – means that individual citizens must be involved in decision making and policy formulation.

Unintended consequencesEuropean and US policies on biofuels had the unintended consequence of causing starvation in the developing world. Although motivated by a desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this policy had disastrous unintended consequences.In 2013 Eamonn Meehan wrote in the Irish Times that:the true impact of biofuels is clear to all. By incentivising land owners to replace food crops with fuel crops, the EU’s quota has reduced food production in areas of the world where poor communities were already at risk of hunger. Food prices have rocketed, land grabs are on the rise, and hunger has worsened in areas of the developing world as agricultural land is used to fuel European cars. . . . As well as increasing hunger the current policy on biofuels will lead to higher rather than lower greenhouse emissions. . . . Europe now burns enough food calories in fuel tanks every year to feed 100 million people. Each percentage point reduction would amount to millions of acres being handed back to food production”In 2007 Jean Ziegler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, called biofuels a crime against humanity and asked for a five-year moratorium on the practice of using food crops for fuel.This example illustrates that general problem that policies may be implemented that have very bad outcomes not originally anticipated. Fishing polices worldwide have had the unintended consequence of deleting fish stocks:Overfishing is emptying our oceans. In simple terms it means catching too many fish at a faster rate than what fish can reproduce naturally. It has now become a major global environmental problem. In European seas, 64% of fish populations are overfished. In the Mediterranean Sea, overfishing has reached a critical 96%. For decades, politicians have ignored scientific advice when setting annual fish catch limits in our seas. Illegal fishing, weak monitoring and enforcement measures, destructive fishing methods, and fishing in areas where fish grow and spawn are all factors behind overfishing. This is an example of the tragedy of the commons . Shared local or global resources can be enjoyed by all in a sustainable way if everyone behaves responsibly. However, when individuals maximise their personal benefit, the resource can be damaged or even annihilated, e.g. shared pastures can be overgrazed to become dust bowls. Another example is the destruction of rain forests.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/european-biofuels-policy-is-feeding-cars-but-starving-people-in-developing-world-1.1633379
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0801/full/climate.2007.71.html
http://eu.oceana.org/en/our-work/stop-overfishing/overview
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full
Systems
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/systems-thinking-complexity
http://oro.open.ac.uk/48475/Towards a System of Systems Concepts - Ackoff Center Weblog
ackoffcenter.blogs.com/ackoff_center_weblog/files/ackoffsystemofsystems.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01219
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00197

The diagram below shows the population of the UK compared to that of South Africa To understand these population dynamics for policy purposes requires more information than this feedback diagram.