Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich) A New Approach to Sustainability Calling for Novel Science, Technology and Arts
Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich) Economics 2.0: Towards A Self- Regulating, Participatory Market Society to Counter Complexity and Extreme Events
The Age of Information Big data Brainpower computing Hyperconnectivity Cybersocial systems Information as the oil of the 21 st century
Cascading Effects During Financial Crises
Cascading Effects During Financial Crises
Cascading Effects During Financial Crises Socio-Economic Problems
Cascading Effects During Financial Crises Gottes Hand/Finger
Cascading Effects During Financial Crises Video by Frank Schweitzer et al.
Networking is Good But Promotes Cascading Effects We now have a global exchange of people, money, goods, information, ideas Globalization and technological change have created a strongly coupled and interdependent world Network infrastructures create pathways for disaster spreading! Need adaptive decoupling strategies.
Some Serious Knowledge Gaps Globalization and technological revolutions have changed our world, but we don t have the knowledge to understand the complex global techno-socio-economic-environmental system we have created. For example, we lack knowledge in: 1. Non-equilibrium economics 2. Strongly coupled and interdependent systems 3. Behavior of multi-level complex systems 4. New data science ( social information theory ) 5. Systemic risks and integrated risk management
Cascading Effects During Financial Crises With all the Big Data of Human Activities Now Becoming Available, What Could We Do?
Crafting Instruments to Explore the World Connect web experiments with data mining and modelling tools to reach an acceleration of knowledge generation as in the Human Genome Project Hubble, Nasa
Build platforms to explore & interact What for? People Turn knowledge into wisdom What is? What if? Create systems to sense & understand Data provide data create new technology Models Develop models to simulate & predict Turn data into information Turn information into knowledge
Platforms to explore & interact Global Participatory Platform Innovation Accelerator Systems to sense & understand Planetary Nervous System provide data create new technology Living Earth Simulator Models to simulate & predict
Platforms to explore & interact Global Participatory Platform Innovation Accelerator Systems to sense & understand Planetary Nervous System provide data create new technology Living Earth Simulator Models to simulate & predict
Cascading Effects During Financial Crises
More Sustainability and Resilience through Collective, ICT-enabled (Self-)Awareness 1. Goal: Measure the world s state, social footprint and social capital (e.g. trust) in real time, detect possible threats and opportunities 2. Privacy-respecting data mining CERN-like vision: Create a measurement instrument for techno-socio-economicenvironmental systems Painting by Maurits Cornelis Escher
Crowd-Sourcing 3D Environments Thanks to Marc Pollefeys See also Open Streetmap - the free Wiki world map
New Compasses for Decision-Makers Consider social capital: Solidarity, cooperativeness, compliance, GDP reputation, trust, attention, curiosity, Goal: Create indices better than GDP/capita, considering health, environment, social well-being, to promote sustainability Green = Happiest Blue Purple Orange Red = Least Happy Grey = Data not available happiness, health, environmental care Happiness
Observatory for Financial Instabilities
Observatory for Epidemic Spreading and Health Risks
Observatory for Wars and Conflicts
Transport and Logistics Exploratory
Platforms to explore & interact Global Participatory Platform Innovation Accelerator Systems to sense & understand Planetary Nervous System provide data create new technology Living Earth Simulator Models to simulate & predict
Building FuturICT s Living Earth Simulator Integrate existing models (traffic, production, economic system, crowd behavior, social cooperation, social norms, social conflict, crime, war ) Scale them up to global scale Increase degree of detail, accuracy
Example: Global Epidemic Spreading Thanks to our FuturICT partner Alex Vespignani et al.
FuturICT s Benefits Scale with Societal Costs 1. Financial crisis: Losses of 2.2 trillion $ 2. Conflict: Global military expenditures amount to 1.5 trillion $ annually. 3. Terrorism: 9/11 attacks caused 90 billion $ lost output of the US economy 4. Crime and corruption: 2-5% of GDP, about 2 trillion $ annually. 5. Flu: A true influenza pandemic infecting 1% of world population would cause losses of 1-2 trillion $ per annum 6. Congestion: 7-8 billion only in UK Even a 1% improvement would create benefits many times higher than project investments For comparison: Weather forecasts cost 10CHF per citizen, but create a 5 times higher benefit. Business opportunities: Facebook s value, for example, amounts to 60-80 billion $
Platforms to explore & interact Global Participatory Platform Innovation Accelerator Systems to sense & understand Planetary Nervous System provide data create new technology Living Earth Simulator Models to simulate & predict
The Challenge of Innovation The five stages of innovation 1. People deny that the innovation is required. 2. People deny that the innovation is effective. 3. People deny that the innovation is important. 4. People deny that the innovation will justify the effort required to adopt it. 5. People accept and adopt the innovation, enjoy its benefits, attribute it to people other than the innovator, and deny the existence of stages 1 to 4. Inspired by Alexander von Humboldt's 'Three Stages of Scientific Discovery'
Some Quotes "Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. -- Thomas Edison, 1889. (The first successful test of electric light bulbs was on October 22, 1879). "It's a great invention but who would want to use it anyway? -- Rutherford B. Hayes, U.S. President, 1872, after a demonstration of Alexander Bell's telephone. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943. "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." -- Lee DeForest, inventor.
Innovation is not a Pipeline
Innovation is an Ecosystem Diversity is important and pays off Inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary research
Platforms to explore & interact Global Participatory Platform Innovation Accelerator Systems to sense & understand Planetary Nervous System provide data create new technology Living Earth Simulator Models to simulate & predict
Filter Bubble
Filter Bubble
Filter Bubble
Measurement input
Undermining of wisdom of crowds
Filter Bubble
Filter Bubble
Global Participatory Computing for Our Complex World Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich) New science and technology to understand and manage our complex world in a more sustainable and resilient way