understanding   impact networks	Cross-impact balance analysis
Home     Cross-impact balance analysis     Approach     CIB algorithm     Project references     Publications     Guidelines     ScenarioWizard     Contact     ZIRN	Project "ACCESS" Analysing social context complexity of environmental simulations This project of the cluster of excellence “Simulation Technologies” (SimTech) at the University of Stuttgart deals with methods to integrate political, social and economical contexts into environmental simulations. Environmental simulations are important instruments to analyze environmental change, to analyse its causes and effects on regional and global levels and to test and to evaluate policies. These simulations are relevant tools for science itself as well as for policy advice. The results of environmental simulation depend on their assumptions regarding (future) social contexts, such as population growth, consumer behaviour, technological development and diffusion, regulation and policies. Today’s environmental simulations do not always meet the complexity, the uncertainty as well as the qualitative nature of these social dimensions and their interactions. Often, there is an imbalance between in depth and state of the art environmental modelling and less profound and less elaborated approaches to social dimensions (which are e.g. integrated via single external parameters or via intuitive scenarios). Interdisciplinary approaches are required to deal with the complex interrelations between environment and society more adequately. Such approaches need to link ‘hard’ scientific knowledge (e.g. physics, biology, chemistry) with knowledge of the social sciences (e.g. sociology, political and economical sciences). For that purpose, integrated assessment models (IAM) are developed to model and simulate environment and society as integrated systems. But these approaches have their own difficulties: knowledge from the natural sciences is simplified and social dimensions are represented only to the extent that they are quantifiable. In this project, CIB is used as a method to integrate social contexts in environmental simulations. Via case studies, we analyse demand, potentials and pitfalls of this interdisciplinary approach and develop procedures and routines for its application in the field of environmental simulations. Project duration: 2009 - 2012 Contact: Hannah Kosow, Dipl.-Soz.Wiss. >> SimTech homepage	News The Helmholtz Alliance "ENERGY-TRANS" studies the interplay between technological and societal aspects of the energy transition in Germany. ZIRN develops societal scenarios using the CIB method... More News In a project dealing with the conditions of sustainable heat consumption the interdependence of structural conditions, actor behaviour and consumer behaviour is analysed using the CIB method... More News A project of the Stuttgart Cluster of Excellence "SimTech" uses CIB as a method to integrate political, social and economical contexts into environmental simulations... More News In a project about obesity prevention the obesity risks of socially disadvantaged children and adolescents will be analysed using the CIB method... More News The German-Peruvian project LiWa aims at strategies to cope with the threats of climate change to the water supply of Lima. The project's integrative scenarios are developed using the CIB method... More News Version 3.42 of the free CIB software ScenarioWizard Basic is available now... More Archive The archive offers a compilation of older CIB notes on projects and publications... More