Missions for a better tomorrow

In 1972, the Club of Rome published "The Limits to Growth", a groundbreaking report that used system dynamics to model different scenarios of the world's future. This work laid the foundation for modern system dynamics modeling and continues to influence policy and decision-making today.

Connected to the club of Rome is the Earth 4 All initiative which aim is to accelerate the systems-change we need for an equitable future on a finite planet.

We helped them to prototype a web tool based on their models to simulate the impact of different policies on the world's future.

Challenges

There were two main challenges:

• Making the models web compatible
• Design an experience and an interface that would make the models usable by non-specialists

Development

The Earth For All Regional models are developed in an engineering software called Vensim. The first prototypes were proof of concepts trying to find the best way to translate the Vensim models to the web. We tested different libraries and approaches, both commercial and open source. Finally we partnered with Climate Interactive so they would add some remaining features to their open source library https://sdeverywhere.org Once we knew it was possible to run the models directly in the browser, we were able to develop all the data processing pieces and start designing the interface.

Design

The original brief asked for a "Game like simulation", where the user could experiment changing the investment in different policies during the sequential periods of time.

Since changing too many individual policies could be too complex, we decided to group them in scenarios, which is a concept that would be more easily understood by the user.

After each period of time, we designed a simple dashboard-like interface to show the evolution of the different indicators and how far they are from the target.

Team

• Earth 4 All team in charge of system dynamics modeling and leading the project
• Piero Zagami as design lead
• Climate Interactive with their library to translate Vensim models to web assembly
• Graphic Method Studio as development lead coordinating the different actions

The tool was presented at the UN Summit of the Future 2024.

Being able to collaborate with so many talented people was a privilege, and the experience was a great learning about system dynamics.