From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design

As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain "ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a network of Centers for integrative systems design, which shall be able to run all potentially relevant scenarios, identify causality chains, explore feedback and cascading effects for a number of model variants, and determine the reliability of their implications (given the validity of the underlying models). They will be able to detect possible negative side effect of policy decisions, before they occur. The Centers belonging to this network of Integrative Systems Design Centers would be focused on a particular field, but they would be part of an attempt to eventually cover all relevant areas of society and economy and integrate them within a "Living Earth Simulator". The results of all research activities of such Centers would be turned into informative input for political Decision Arenas. For example, Crisis Observatories (for financial instabilities, shortages of resources, environmental change, conflict, spreading of diseases, etc.) would be connected with such Decision Arenas for the purpose of visualization, in order to make complex interdependencies understandable to scientists, decision-makers, and the general public.Comment: 34 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

Cluster analysis of development of alternative finance models depending on the regional affiliation of countries

The article examines the hypothesis about the existence of regional peculiarities in the development of alternative financing models (such as p2p consumer lending, p2p business lending, p2p real estate lending, balance sheet business lending, balance sheet consumer lending, equity-based crowdfunding, reward-based crowdfunding, real estate crowdfunding, profit sharing crowdfunding, donation-based crowdfunding, invoice trading, debt-based securities). According to an alternative hypothesis, due to the high integration of international financial markets, there are no regional peculiarities of the development of alternative financing models. The cluster analysis tools allow verifying these hypotheses. The cluster analysis methods used, such as tree clustering, k-means clustering, and two-way joining, demonstrate the lack of links between the country's regional affiliation and the degree of development of certain types of alternative financing in it. The key factors affecting the formation of clusters are volumes of peer-to-peer consumer lending and business lending, as well as the volume of invoice trading. According to the results of the research, the authors conclude that it is necessary to find other factors, apart from the regional features, which influence the ratio in the development of certain types of alternative financing in different countries

Improved multi-objective optimization model for policy design of rental housing market

Renting is, like owning a house, a way to realize residence rights, playing an important role in maintaining the equilibrium of the housing market. The lack of attention paid to policy design of the rental housing market causes low effectiveness in the housing resource flow and allocation at both local and national levels. Thus, we propose a novel design framework and process of public policy, in particular the development policy for the rental housing market. This innovative approach abstracts the policy design process into a solution-formation process for a high-dimensional and multi-objective optimization problem. First, based on opinion mining, using co-occurrence networks, text mining and other methods, in addition to authoritative literature and expert opinions from the Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) as data sources, the objective function and the constraint function coefficients were determined to construct a multi-objective function of rental housing market policy. Second, this paper proposes a two-stage evolutionary high-dimensional multi-objective optimization algorithm based on the Pareto dominance relationship to solve high-dimensional multi-objective functions. Finally, we designed a rental housing policy tool-mix selection system-modeling process and obtained six sets of feasible solutions and objectives after 300,000 simulations. Therefore, the policy tool-mix selection system presented in this study effectively supports the policymaking process.</jats:p

Digital real estate: a review of the technologies and tools transforming the industry and society

© 2023 The Author(s); Shantou University. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Real estate plays a crucial role in driving national economies. However, the process of transferring properties and engaging with various stakeholders can be hindered by a lack of adequate information, complex procedures, and excessive paperwork. The advent of digital real estate has revolutionized the industry and how stakeholders interact. The present study aims to conduct a bibliometric and systematic review of digital real estate, utilizing historical, institutional, country, and keyword analyses for the bibliometric review and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines for the systematic review. Through thematic analysis, the study identified four key themes for transforming digital real estate: information communication technologies, data collection technologies, data networking tools, and digital decision-making systems. Additionally, the study proposes a digital real estate transformation framework that can assist stakeholders, urban planners, and decision-makers in embracing digital tools and technologies. The study concludes that digital real estate has the potential to revolutionize future urban planning and real estate development through the use of decision support systems and advanced technologies.Peer reviewe

The benefit of 3D laser scanning technology in the generation and calibration of FEM models for health assessment of concrete structures

Terrestrial laser scanning technology (TLS) is a new technique for quickly getting three-dimensional information. In this paper we research the health assessment of concrete structures with a Finite Element Method (FEM) model based on TLS. The goal focuses on the benefits of 3D TLS in the generation and calibration of FEM models, in order to build a convenient, efficient and intelligent model which can be widely used for the detection and assessment of bridges, buildings, subways and other objects. After comparing the finite element simulation with surface-based measurement data from TLS, the FEM model is determined to be acceptable with an error of less than 5%. The benefit of TLS lies mainly in the possibility of a surface-based validation of results predicted by the FEM model