Science for Policy Handbook by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elsevier
Published: 2020-07-09T21:17:25+00:00

One very powerful approach for analysing such systems is to establish scaling laws. For example, the energy consumption of a town as a function of the number of inhabitants typically scales as a power law. Establishing such power laws does not reveal much about the underlying mechanisms as such – hence, more detailed models are needed – but it allows categorising towns and regions, thereby opening spaces for coping with complexity (see West (2018) for numerous examples). Scaling laws also help in other contexts, e.g., for categorising networks, such as (economic) issues related to internet traffic (e.g., Willinger et al., 2002).

6. Sociological analysis: There are questions, which can hardly be answered by any of the approaches above. For example, do modern societies create complexity by their very actions – and policies? Sociological analysis, i.e., stepping out of the system and taking a remote perspective, may propose answers to issues such as resilience of infrastructures, the occurrence of power blackouts, technology transitions like the shift to a decarbonised energy system, the shift towards a circular economy, the security of the internet and more generally (see, e.g., Labanca, 2017).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.