Seed-div: an abstract role-playing game for discussing collective management of agrobiodiversity

L'objectif principal de cette recherche est d'accompagner les paysans dans l'élaboration d'un cadre de gestion collective de la diversité de leurs variétés de céréales vivrières. La gestion semencière et son impact sur la dynamique de la biodiversité sont soumis aux choix individuels des paysans, leurs stratégies d'une part, et au fonctionnement général du système semencier d'autre part. Nous postulons que la compréhension partagée des interactions au sein de ce système complexe est un prérequis pour travailler ensemble à la construction de règles de gestion collective qui participent à la durabilité de l'agriculture via un accès à un large choix de semences. La modélisation participative conceptuelle et les jeux de rôle ont été utilisés durant différents ateliers réunissant chercheurs, ONG, organisations paysannes et agriculteurs. Le résultat de cette série d'ateliers correspond à un modèle, un système multi-agents, représentant un archétype de village malien permettant de simuler la diversité de stratégies individuelles de gestion de semences qui sont ensuite disponibles gratuitement pour la communauté villageoise. Les agents du modèle sont des agriculteurs qui choisissent les variétés à semer ce qui provoque des échanges dans la communauté en fonction de leurs stratégies individuelles ou de facteurs externes. Les paramètres utilisés ont une valeur qualitative c'est pourquoi le modèle sert de support de discussion entre paysans de différentes régions. Le modèle a été construit et validé au travers de ces ateliers avec un impact évident sur les acteurs locaux pour la construction de nouveaux scénarios de gestion de la diversité variétale. Ainsi, le modèle a pu être utilisé en termes de prospective pour simuler des scénarios à partir de nouvelles formes d'action collective. (Résumé d'auteur

Customer-engineer relationship management for converged ICT service companies

Thanks to the advent of converged communications services (often referred to as ‘triple play’), the next generation Service Engineer will need radically different skills, processes and tools from today’s counterpart. Why? in order to meet the challenges of installing and maintaining services based on multi-vendor software and hardware components in an IP-based network environment. The converged services environment is likely to be ‘smart’ and support flexible and dynamic interoperability between appliances and computing devices. These radical changes in the working environment will inevitably force managers to rethink the role of Service Engineers in relation to customer relationship management. This paper aims to identify requirements for an information system to support converged communications service engineers with regard to customer-engineer relationship management. Furthermore, an architecture for such a system is proposed and how it meets these requirements is discussed

Modeling Complex Systems

Abstract Empirical observations suggest that linear dynamics are not an adequate representa- tion of ecological systems and that a realistic representation would require adoption of complex nonlinear dynamical systems with characteristics encountered in complex adaptive systems (CAS). Adequate modelling should include and combine, among others, strategic interactions among economic agents, nonconvexities induced by non-linear feedbacks, separate spatial and temporal scales and modeling of spatiotempo-ral dynamics, and allowance of alternative time scales. Ignoring these characteristics might obscure very important features that we observe in reality such as bifurcations and irreversibilities or hysteresis. As a consequence, the design of policies that do not take CAS characteristics into account might lead to erroneous results and undesirable states of managed economic-ecological systems.Complex adaptive systems, differential games, spatiotemporal dynamics, fast-slow variables.

Collective Action and Social Innovation in the Energy Sector: A Mobilization Model Perspective

This conceptual paper applies a mobilization model to Collective Action Initiatives (CAIs) in the energy sector. The goal is to synthesize aspects of sustainable transition theories with social movement theory to gain insights into how CAIs mobilize to bring about niche-regime change in the context of the sustainable energy transition. First, we demonstrate how energy communities, as a representation of CAIs, relate to social innovation. We then discuss how CAIs in the energy sector are understood within both sustainability transition theory and institutional dynamics theory. While these theories are adept at describing the role energy CAIs have in the energy transition, they do not yet offer much insight concerning the underlying social dimensions for the formation and upscaling of energy CAIs. Therefore, we adapt and apply a mobilization model to gain insight into the dimensions of mobilization and upscaling of CAIs in the energy sector. By doing so we show that the expanding role of CAIs in the energy sector is a function of their power acquisition through mobilization processes. We conclude with a look at future opportunities and challenges of CAIs in the energy transition.This research was conducted under the COMETS (Collective action Models for Energy Transition and Social Innovation) project, funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Program of the European Commission, grant number 837722