RAND Workshop on Complexity and Public Policy

Complex Systems and Policy Analysis:
NewTools for a New Millennium

September 27 and 28, 2000

RAND
1200 South Hayes Street
Arlington, Virginia

Organizers

Jim Kadtke and Robert Lempert

Last updated July 25, 2001.
Archived December 1, 2003.

Affiliation Affiliation
Speakers

The following speakers have provided the slides from their presentations; thetitles link to color PDF files of these slides. Additional materials will be posted as they become available. See also the full agenda.

SpecialPresentations
Speaker Topic
Bruce Don RAND Science and Technology Policy Institute Complexity and Public Policy: A Hallmark of the 21st Century

 [disclaimer]
David K. Campbell Boston University Chaos, Complexity and All That: One Physicist's Persepctive

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Ken Baskin Life Design Partners Social Ecosystems: A Complexity Context for Health Care Policy
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Leslie Henrickson University of California at Los Angeles

Trends in the Use of Chaos and Complexity Theories and Computer Simulation for Social Science Researchers
[disclaimer]
TechnicalPresentations
Speaker Topic
Christopher Meyer Director, The Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation It's Alive: Self-Organization in the Connected Economy
[disclaimer]
Rob Axtell Center on Social and Econmic Dynamics, The Brookings Institution,
Johns Hopkins University		 Zipf's Law of City Sizes: A Microeconomic Explanation Far From Equilibrium
[disclaimer]
Laura R. Gilliom Sandia National Laboratory, Distributed Systems Assurance Department Engineered Collectives: Agent-Enabled Assurance of Distributed Information Systems
[disclaimer]
Tom Maxwell University of Maryland Developing Understanding of Ecological Economic Systems
[disclaimer]
Kathleen Carley Director, Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems, Carnegie-Mellon University Managing Change: An Interaction Knowledge Perspective
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Dan Hastings Massachusetts Institute of Technology From the Moon to Mars: The Apollo-SEI Project
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Nigel Gilbert University of Surrey, UK Innovation Networks: A Policy Model
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David A. Meyer University of California at San Diego; Institute of Physical Sciences, Los Alamos, New Mexico; New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA The Complexity of Voting
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Michael J. North Argonne National Laboratory An Agent-Based Tool for Infrastructure Interdependency Policy Analysis
[disclaimer]
Bill Reynolds Least-Squares Software LLC A General Framework for Representing Behavior in Agent Based Modeling
[disclaimer]
Robert N. Bernard PricewaterhouseCoopers Policy Simulator: A Decision Support System for Local Governments
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Dianne C. Barton Infrastructure Surety Department, Sandia National Laboratories Analysis of Complexity in Infrastructure Systems Using Agent Based Microsimulation
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Christopher Owens BIOS Getting There is Half the Fun: Why an Uncalibrated, Unverified Model is Still a Good Thing
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Steve Bankes RAND,
Evolving Logic		 Tools and Techniques for Developing Robust Policies for Complex and Uncertain Systems
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Robert J. Lempert RAND Robust Strategies for Abating Climate Change
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Gus Koehler California Research Bureau, California State Library, and The University of Southern California Simulating the Timing Effects of Public Policy Interventions
[disclaimer]

About the Workshop
(as originally posted)

RAND is planning a two-day workshop to investigate how state-of-the-artdevelopments in chaos and complexity theory can be applied to public policyanalysis and decisionmaking. This survey workshop will also attempt to frame aseries of follow-on workshops of computer-based, interactive team exercises tohelp develop new methodologies for specific policy topic areas. RAND is perhapsuniquely qualified for these tasks, given its long history of developinginnovative quantitative methods for policy analysis and its early involvement incomplex systems as policy tools.

Purpose: This workshop will survey the most recentmethods in the theory and application of complex systems and multiagent modelingmethods that are specifically applicable to current real-world policy analysisand decision-making problems. We hope to develop an informed dialogue amongresearchers and decision-makers to determine which combinations of tools andpolicy topics are most relevant now or in the near future.

Attendees: The workshop will feature prominentresearchers who are currently developing the most useful or novelcomplexity-based tools which can be applied to important public policy concerns.Representatives of the policy analysis and decision-making community, includingFederal Agency program managers and other members of government, will help toframe the important policy issues and provide critical feedback.

Topical Focus: The complexity-based tools will includemultiagent models, cellular automata, distributed learning methods, chaotic ornonlinear dynamic models, network analysis methods, system dynamics, andvisualization technologies, among others. Policy topic areas will includeeconomic innovation, technology diffusion, infrastructure protection, urban andecological planning, emergent organization and management, national security,international relations, climate change, and general social issues.

Follow-on Sessions: In addition to the two-day surveyworkshop, RAND may organize a series of one-day follow-on workshops, each on animportant policy topic identified at the initial workshop. These one-dayworkshops will consist of an interactive team exercise, with representatives ofboth the research and policy communities, and a supporting real-time computermodel and visualization tool, to help frame a methodology for usingcomplex-systems models for a particular quantitative policy analysis realm.

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