Democratising complex system modelling

Abstract

In the contemporary context of an acute need for sustainability and swift response to imminent crises such as global warming, pandemics and economic system disruptions, the focus on responsible decision making, ethical risk assessment and mitigation at all organizational levels is an overarching goal. Our aim is to introduce a deterministic method for investigating the stability of complex systems, in order to find the most important elements of such systems and their impact on different scenarios. The novelty of the current approach lies in its compact format and intuitive nature, designed to accommodate a limited amount of computational resources. The proposed modelling method involves the mapping of complex systems from a diversity of disciplines (economic markets, resource management domain and the community impact of suburbanisation) onto a sequence of chemical reactions and involving a subsequent mathematical analysis. Mapping the results back onto the use cases shows that one can retrieve a considerable amount of detail, making the modelling strategy general enough to be adaptable and scalable while also detailed enough to provide valuable insights for practical scenarios.