Transdisciplinary Models and Multi-Scale Simulation

Short description of the future field

Transdisciplinary Models and Multi-Scale Simulation belongs to the new future fields, which have been elaborated within the Foresight-Process as focal issues in future research activities. Interviews with experts at home and abroad as well as an online survey and bibliometric investigations led to the following definition and delineation:

Definition and Delineation

Virtual systems analyses are now indispensable in technical and social-science research. Systems analyses have so far been used to form hypotheses on complex data in physical, chemical and biological contexts, improving such data for use in projects in application-oriented research and development practice. Application-oriented projects deal with complex phenomena, despite limited knowledge on the details of functional contexts. Systems analyses must be carried out using experiments if these projects are to be pursued promptly and involve reasonable amounts of time and effort.

Wherever developments and their respective biotic, social, technological or other environments overlap in complex conditions, varying observations and abstract models must be consolidated accordingly. At the same time, the scope of models transferred from one area of application to another must be determined. Working out the generic aspects and similarities of very different models is a great challenge in achieving this.

The second future challenge consists in using suitable translation processes to exchange findings between contiguous or hitherto independent disciplines. Innovative simulation methods from the atomic level and algorithms for current and future problem areas can be developed out of a combination of new findings. Examples of research topics and areas for development include:

• How and using which models can ecosystemic contexts such as climate change be simulated to achieve progress in knowledge of the interconnection of systems? How and in which cases could simulation be used to make prognoses?
• How could phenomena of self-organised complexity, such as the behaviour of organic cells, be modelled and simulated, starting at the atomic level, to achieve further medical diagnosis and therapy breakthroughs?
  

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Report

The complete chapter on this new future field from the Foresight report is available for download here.

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