Apocalypse Dynamics

Apocalypse Dynamics is an "Integrated Assessment Model that Includes Advanced Methods" (I.A.M. that I.A.M.). 

The ultimate goal of the Apocalypse Dynamics™ simulator is to understand and manage complex, global, socially interactive systems, with a focus on sustainability and resilience. Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying societies probably constitutes the most pressing scientific grand challenge of our century and is equally important for the development of novel robust, trustworthy and adaptive information and communication technologies (ICT), based on socially inspired paradigms. 

In 1972, scientists from MIT created a computer model that analyzed global resource consumption and production. Their results shocked the world and created stirring conversation about global 'overshoot' or resource use beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. 

Today, Arnaud Dorthe comes back to update and expand their original findings in Apocalypse Dynamics. Citing climate change as the most tangible example of our current overshoot, this humble scientist now provide us with an updated scenario. Over the past five decades, population growth and global warming have forged on with a striking semblance to the scenarios laid out by the World computer model in the original book Limits to Growth. While Arnaud Dorthe does not make a practice of predicting future environmental degradation, he offers an analysis of present and future trends in resource use, and assess the predicament of Mankind. In many ways, the message contained in Apoclypse Dynamics is apocalyptic because overshoot cannot be sustained long without collapse. Indeed there is no more reason to believe that humanity can still reverse some of its damage to Earth even if it takes appropriate measures to reduce inefficiency and waste.  

Apocalypse Dynamics is a long anticipated revival of some of the original voices in the growing chorus of sustainability. Apocalypse Dynamics is a work of stunning intelligence that will expose for humanity the hazy but critical line between human growth, human development and environment damages.

Limits to Growth: either the bitter end or the better end

We think that integrating ICT, Complexity Science and the Social Sciences creates a paradigm shift, facilitating a symbiotic co-evolution of ICT and society. Data from our Apocalypse Dynamics™ system are leveraged to develop models of techno-socio-economic-environmental systems. In turn, insights from these models inform the development of a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organized ICT systems.

The Apocalypse Dynamics™ project makes science catch up with the speed at which new problems and opportunities are arising in our changing world as consequences of globalization, technological, demographic and environmental change. This makes a contribution to strengthening our societies’ adaptivity, resilience, and sustainability. The Apocalypse Dynamics™ project does so by leveraging existing scientific models and combining these with the best established methods in areas like multi-scale computer modelling, super-computing, large-scale data mining and participatory platforms.