The paper, entitled "Human and character dynamics (HANDY): modeling inequality and employ of assets within the collapse or sustainability of communities," was released within the May 2014 problem from the journal Environmental Financial aspects. Its authors are Safa Motesharrei, a Ph.D. candidate in applied mathematics at UMD Jorge Rivas from the Institute of worldwide Atmosphere and Society and Eugenia Kalnay, Distinguished College Professor within the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science and also the Institute for Physical Science at UMD.
Kalnay, an worldwide recognized climate and weather researcher, labored in leadership positions at NASA and also the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for 2 decades and presently serves around the Not Secretary General's Scientific Advisory Board on Sustainability. She's famous, simply, for leading the nation's Weather Service's advances in weather modeling within the the nineteen nineties. Her recent work has centered on evolving knowledge of global warming and environment sustainability through enhanced modeling from the combined interaction of earth and human systems.
HANDY's beginning point is really a well-known model in biology and population ecology, generally referred to as "predator-prey model," which is often used to know the dynamics of animal populations. The scientists applied that model's concepts to human communities, and incorporated two new variables that aren't incorporated in existing models: accumulation of wealth and economic stratification between wealthy and poor. These changes are essential, the scientists say, to mirror that some segments of human society use more assets than the others, and gathered wealth can delay, although not prevent, the decline that happens whenever a population surpasses the transporting capacity of their atmosphere. With HANDY, the scientists say, they've created a practical way of while using relevant natural, social and economic conditions to estimate an individual society's transporting capacity.
Although some HANDY situations are an indication of past cultures that prospered after which flattened, like the ancient Romans and Mayans, the model wasn't produced to describe specific societies' collapse, team people stated.
The model is "not meant to describe actual individual cases" -- for example modern Western society -- "but instead to supply a general framework that enables undertaking 'thought experiments' for that phenomenon of collapse and also to test changes that will cure it,Inch the authors authored within the research paper.
"The model doesn't state that society's collapse is imminent," stated Rivas, "nor will it predict a collapse for 'Western' or 'industrial' civilization despite some pre-publication reviews on the contrary.Inch
"HANDY isn't a predicting model," Motesharrei stated. "It can't be employed to predict the way forward for any society. It may, however, allow us to comprehend the possible underlying systems within the evolution of the society."
This minimal modeling approach concentrates on the lengthy-term behavior qualities of dynamical systems, the authors explain. The aim isn't to locate precise solutions for that variables from the real system, but rather to deal with questions for example:
Over time, will the machine settle in a steady condition?What exactly are these possible steady states?What factors pick which lengthy-term behavior is adopted?"The outcomes in our model are positive, simply because they reveal that by looking into making certain choices, we can result in a sustainable future," stated Rivas. Unlike physical and natural systems, like the photo voltaic system or perhaps an ecosystem, "we are able to, as humans, make critical options that may alter the lengthy-term path our social system will require, so we can optimize such options using scientific models. This can be a key takeaway lesson of the paper."
However, the model implies that "when we still over-deplete character, and when inequality continues so that the wealthy consume way over poor people, the machine eventually collapses," Kalnay stated.
