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Complex Systems Analysis

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Report
Graph Theoretic Algorithms for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent Program
The Ground Based Strategic Deterrent is a complete replacement for an aging intercontinental ballistic missile system that is currently under development. What are quantitative methods that can be used to make the unified certification process for nuclear systems more rigorous and efficient?
Nov 8, 2021
Report
Leveraging Complexity in Great-Power Competition and Warfare: Volume I
The United States should aim to minimize the element of complexity for itself while maximizing it for its adversary in great-power competition and warfare. But what does complexity mean in an Air Force context? And how can it be used as a method of attack?
Aug 26, 2021

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Report
Competing for the International System
The United States should view emerging strategic rivalries with China and Russia in systemic terms. That means maintaining predominant influence over the international system and also taking actions designed to shape system outcomes rather than to achieve case-specific wins.
Nov 10, 2022
Report
Emerging Technology Beyond 2035: Scenario-Based Technology Assessment for Future Military Contingencies
This report presents the development and implementation of a technology assessment process to help the Army understand the implications of key emerging technologies that could be important for Army missions in the years 2035 to 2050.
Aug 29, 2022
Report
The Role of Standards in Fostering Capability Evolution: Does Design Matter? Insights from Interoperability Standards
This report presents the findings of a review of two military standards that have enabled significant interoperability and evolution in warfighting to better understand paths toward successful interface standard design in the military environment.
Mar 2, 2022
Journal Article
Reforming the Teaching and Conducting of Policy Studies to Deal Better with Complex Systems
The teaching and conduct of policy analysis needs updating to account better for the special challenges of social problems occurring in complex adaptive systems.
Sep 17, 2021
Journal Article
Policy Analysis for Improving the Performance of Large Social Systems
This column raises three questions and provides some preliminary thoughts for discussion about how the scholarship and practice of policy analysis can contribute to addressing contemporary system challenges.
Sep 16, 2021
Report
Leveraging Complexity in Great-Power Competition and Warfare: Volume II
The Air Force should apply a complexity lens through which to review ongoing and future efforts to best leverage complexity to U.S. decision advantage. The technical companion to an initial exploration includes a literature review and a user manual.
Aug 26, 2021
Commentary
Rebuild Public Health for the Next Pandemic?
COVID-19 exposed how underprepared the United States was for a pandemic and raised questions about preparedness for the next one. With political will to spend money on public health, how can America take a holistic view of all the options? And how should investments be prioritized?
Aug 6, 2021
Journal Article
Steps Towards Value-Aligned Systems
This paper argues for a more structured systems-level approach for assessing value-alignment in sociotechnical systems. We highlight how adopting a system perspective improves our ability to explain and address misbehaving algorithms better.
Mar 10, 2021
Journal Article
Can Measures Change the World?
The purpose of this article is to start a dialogue about how one can better use measurement to promote large-scale system change.
Aug 21, 2020
Journal Article
Confronting Model Uncertainty in Policy Analysis for Complex Systems: What Policymakers Should Demand
Good policy analysis needs routinely to address not only uncertainty about model inputs, but uncertainty and disagreements about the model itself—especially for complex systems. In the future, analysis that fails to do so may be regarded as fatally flawed.
Feb 11, 2020
Report
Implementing a New Mobility Vision for Rancho Higuera in a Deeply Uncertain, Fast-Changing World: Results from RAND Corporation Participatory Local Planning Workshops
Culver City seeks to reimagine mobility, shifting from cars to other transit modes. A RAND team helped the city develop an implementation plan using decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU) methods embedded in a participatory "shadow" process.
Jan 3, 2020
Report
Deep Decarbonization as a Risk Management Challenge
Deep decarbonization is the idea of reducing net human greenhouse gas emissions to zero in the 21st century. There are three concepts that help explain the full scope of deep decarbonization as a risk management challenge.
Oct 22, 2018
Report
Adapting to a Changing Climate in Southeast Florida
Florida's Miami-Dade and Broward counties are vulnerable to flooding and intrusion of saltwater into drinking water. These risks are driven by sea level rise, changes in precipitation, and urban development. How can the region adapt?
Jun 6, 2018
Report
Priority Challenges for Social and Behavioral Research and Its Modeling
Social-behavioral modeling is famously hard. This report examines shortcomings and obstacles -- some inherent to complex adaptive systems broadly and some due to current methods and practices -- then discusses steps that deserve priority attention.
Apr 16, 2018
Report
A General Agent-Based Model of Social Learning
This report describes a general agent-based model (ABM) for studying social learning, and uses that general ABM to explore the relationship between micro-influence and macro-dynamics for broad classes of problems.
Mar 31, 2017
Report
Domestic Political Discord Is Now the Greatest Threat to U.S. Global Leadership
The United States needs a coherent international strategy for today's turbulent world. But this will be hard to pursue without more domestic political consensus on America's global role.
Jan 18, 2017
Report
Improving Decision Support for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control: Aligning Models and Other Tools with Policymakers' Needs
This report provides an overview of decision-support tools, including models and nonmodeling approaches, for policymakers and modelers and provides recommendations for using the tools to inform real-world infectious disease-related policy questions.
Jul 12, 2016
Report
Robust Decision Making Could Help Defense Resource Planning
Defense planning needs a new approach to identify strategies that perform well over a wide range of threat and funding futures. RDM is designed to inform decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty and complexity, and as shown in an application to the munitions mix challenge, could prove quite useful.
Feb 1, 2016

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Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Paul K. Davis

Adjunct Principal Researcher

Paul K. Davis is an adjunct principal researcher at the RAND Corporation and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research interests include strategic planning and methods for improving it, decisionmaking theory, deterrence theory, counterterrorism, advanced…
Timothy R. Gulden

Senior Policy Researcher

Tim Gulden is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. His research focuses on modeling complex systems in the context of data as well as more general policy analysis including cost/benefit analysis, spatial analysis, organizational design, and emerging methods in artificial…

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