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20-12-2014
MODEST
international working
group on
MODelling of Economies and Societies
in Transition
Co-ordinators:
Zbigniew Nahorski and Jan W. Owsiński
nahorski@ibspan.waw.pl
owsinski@ibspan.waw.pl
Newelska 6, 01-447 Warszawa, Poland; Facsimile: (48 22)
38 10 105
Newsletter
sent out irregularly, mainly
on the basis of what's new
Edited etc. by Jan Owsiński
Issue no. 17, Autumn 2014
Contents:
1. MODEST 2014 meeting in Warsaw
2. Invitation to next MODEST Workshop
3. Proposals and suggestions
1. MODEST 2014 meeting in Warsaw
The most recent Workshop of MODEST,
traditionally affiliated with the bi-annual Polish BOS (Operations and
Systems Research) conference, this time, of course, BOS 2014, took place on
September 24-26 (Wednesday-Friday) 2014 in Warsaw. The (broader) BOS 2014
meeting was, also quite traditionally, organised jointly with the Systems
Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
This particular event had, however, also a much broader framework. Namely,
both BOS 2014 and the MODEST Workshop were collocated with quite a number of
other international meetings. These were: the IEEE Intelligent Systems
conference (IS 2014), the international conference Soft Methods in
Probability and Statistics (SMPS 2014), International Workshop on Fuzzy
Intuitionistic Sets and Generalized Nets, as well as the meeting of the
working group on greenhouse gas emissions uncertainty assessment. All of
these took place in the centre of Warsaw, most of them in the same buildings,
starting with the historical Staszic Palais, the formal seat of the Polish
Academy of Sciences.
The MODEST Workshop brought, as always, very interesting presentations and
discussions, which could well take advantage of the presence of many other
scholars, participating in the BOS 2014 Conference, as well as in the other
collocated events. The publication of the materials took a similar course as
in the case of the preceding workshop (MODEST 2012). Namely, there was no
separate MODEST-related volume or journal issue (the latter being, for
instance, the case of the BOS conference in Bydgoszcz, BOS 2010). Instead,
individual papers were directed to a number of journals, and, after having
passed respective refereeing procedures, have been or are being published in
these titles. We hope to be able to report on the entire set of the MODEST
2014 papers in the next issue of our Newsletter.
Just as a side remark, it should be noted that the papers included in the
MODEST Workshop were authored by scholars from Poland, Sweden, Spain,
Algeria, and United Kingdom, while, to our regret, the announced papers by
authors coming from Russia and Ukraine could not be presented due to the
inability of their authors to join the Workshop. This is, definitely, an
evidence on how the bad political events influence in a disruptive manner
the scientific exchange (even if MODEST Workshop seems to be somewhat of an
exception, since Russian and Ukrainian scientists do, in fact, make it now
to various international meetings, the fact that this actually happened
cannot simply be denied).
2. Invitation to next MODEST Workshop
It is envisaged that the subsequent MODEST
Workshop shall not take place Warsaw, like the tworecent ones, but, instead,
in Poznań, in 2016, affiliated, this time, primarily with the EURO-k
Conference, which is scheduled to take place on 3-6 July 2016. This is not
to say that the affiliation with the bi-annual BOS Conferences of the Polish
Operational and Systems Research Society (here: BOS 2016) shall be dropped.
Actually, the plan is to have both events associated with the EURO-k in
Poznań. Like in the previous cases, it is intended to have the MODEST
Workshop in the form of a series of sessions within the “framework”
conference, gaining through interaction with this broader forum.
The standing proposal for the themes of the Workshop – not precluding any
other issues, pertaining to modelling and analysis of the transformation
processes and phenomena – are (i) the continuing crisis and its impact for
the transforming economies (and, indeed, the more general transformations,
apparently needed), with special emphasis on the role of financial
institutions; (ii) the actual status and role of the information society /
knowledge economy paradigms under different change circumstances; and (iii)
the summary net impact and mechanisms of the greening of economy. To those,
we would like to add, given the present global change and turmoil symptoms:
(iv) the economic war and its repercussions – the victims and the
beneficiaries.
We indeed look forward to your contributions to and an active participation
in the event.
3. Proposals and suggestions
In addition to the themes for the upcoming
MODEST Workshop, we return, once again, to the possible subjects of joint
work within the MODEST community. Thus, in the previous Newsletters we
forwarded some suggestions concerning the potential fields of collaboration,
e.g. within the framework of bilateral or broader, multinational European
projects. We come back herewith to these ideas, with additional information
and one more domain of potential joint work. Let us emphasise that in all
those fields not only definite research work is, of course, being carried
out, but, actually, some collaborative work is, as well, underway.
These activities, and the related ideas, concentrate around the following
four themes (which, of course, do by no means limit the potential scope of
concepts for future collaborative work):
-
modeling for the evaluation of the consequences of and design of changes
in the Common Agricultural Policy; there are already a number of models
that supposedly do the job, but what virtually all of them lack is the
micro- or landscape, or community dimension (or, at a bare minimum – the
one of a municipality); on the other hand there is also a gap on the
real macro scale meaning aggregate effects for the EU and the world; in
conditions of the current crisis the knowledge of potential consequences
of various policies and instruments at the scale of the real processes,
and not only somewhat abstract aggregates, becomes even more important;
-
assessing and modeling the role of ICT in development (place and role in
the feedback loop), especially in terms of development dynamics from
various starting points, and the possibility of short-cuts; here, as
well, the local and regional dimension is of importance; again, this
applies equally to the macro- and the real micro- dimensions, in
economic and spatial terms;
-
modeling the consequences of policies related to the “green paths”, and
the possibility of making (or leaving open and effectively available)
the truly “optimum” choices and avoiding the “green paradoxes”, without
bearing too much of economic and social costs that would impair short-
and medium-term competitiveness; this involves an intricate interplay of
time horizons, investment and risk, mainly associated with energy; the
recent events on the world scene, oil prices and global-warming-related
undertakings included, show it very clearly that the respective models
are indeed necessary, and, at that, a variety of them, that could grasp
the different aspects and perspectives on these issues;
-
development of the methodologies related to decision making under
uncertainty in situations of emergency, with the use of decision rules,
decision trees, fuzzy and intuitionistic logic, and respective
linguistic representations; this set of methodological tools might be of
high value in devising decision support systems for the high-risk
operations with limited information and high uncertainty;
-
the economic war, its instruments, mechanisms, and its consequences –
the historical precedents, the impact on the adversaries, the true
victims and the actual beneficiaries; this, set against the surprisingly
rich background of the current events, starting with winter 2013/2014,
seems to be a subject that has three exceptionally significant aspects:
(I) the capacity to wage the economic war, along with the expected
effects in formal, “official” terms; (II) the role of the economic war
in uncovering the veiled bottom line facts of the economic situation and
economic policies; and (III) the true victims and the actual
beneficiaries of such circumstances.
Should you be interested in collaboration on these themes, or in coining
other ones of potential
interest to members of MODEST, please, contact us about it.
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