Modeling Socio-technical Systems with AgentSpring

AgentSpring is a new agent-based modeling framework especially suited to model and simulate complex socio-technical systems, such as energy markets or transport infrastructures. Common problems encountered when modeling and analyzing such systems are how to represent the variety of facts that describe the system and how to allow agents to make...

Diffusion: Key to Horticulture Innovation Systems

Horticulture, a pillar of the Dutch economy, has already achieved remarkable productivity increases through the use of natural gas for heating, lighting and CO2. Further innovative technologies that could aid the transition toward sustainable energy use, including heat/cold storage and deepgeothermal heat sources, are currently in development...

Resilience and adaptability of infrastructures: A complex adaptive systems perspective

While we rely on the continuous functioning of infrastructures such as water, electricity and Internet, 100% uptime is not possible. Infrastructure systems must therefore be resilient – they must be capable of flexing in response to disruptions and recovering quickly. In this paper we explore options for supporting infrastructure resilience from...

A New Project-Based Curriculum of Design Thinking with Systems Engineering Techniques

We developed a new education curriculum called "ALPS" (Active Learning Project Sequence) at Keio University that emphasizes team project-based learning and design thinking with systems engineering techniques. ALPS is a 6 month course, in which students work as a team and design and propose innovative systems. Students identify requirements,...