System transitions and resilience of systems

System resilience has many dimensions and therefore is difficult to quantify. ASA research has identified some measures that could be used, such as the system efficiency-redundancy balance. This can be applied to a range of ecological and human-made systems and hence inform actual governance and public policy for sustainable development of coupled natural-social systems.

Resilience goes hand in hand with sustainability; however, this field is fraught with uncertainties. ASA researchers have been working to represent and analyze uncertainties as comprehensively as possible, and to develop methods that can lead to improved decision-making under uncertainty. Notably, this work extends to increasing our understanding of the uncertainty in estimating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, helping to pave the way towards their efficient mitigation.

Conceptualizing and quantifying resilience and sustainability

Researchers in the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program contribute to the understanding of sustainability by applying the experiences of their particular studies, each of which deals with the concept in its own way. This allows for development of diverse, system-analytic approaches to quantifying sustainability. More

Managing uncertainty in climate science and meeting sustainability constraints

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a particular challenge for sustainability. Decisions need to be made now to avoid unsustainable futures, but the basis for these decisions, in terms of both data and models, encompasses vast inherent uncertainties. Proper accounting of uncertainties when verifying mitigation efforts and analyzing scenarios of future emissions is the focus of several Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program studies. More

Data analysis revealing behavior patterns

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers apply contemporary approaches to analyze newly available “big data” from social media datasets to find new insights. More

Last edited: 15 March 2016